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Carrion   Listen
adjective
Carrion  adj.  Of or pertaining to dead and putrefying carcasses; feeding on carrion. "A prey for carrion kites."
Carrion beetle (Zool.), any beetle that feeds habitually on dead animals; also called sexton beetle and burying beetle. There are many kinds, belonging mostly to the family Silphidae.
Carrion buzzard (Zool.), a South American bird of several species and genera (as Ibycter, Milvago, and Polyborus), which act as scavengers. See Caracara.
Carrion crow, the common European crow (Corvus corone) which feeds on carrion, insects, fruits, and seeds.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Carrion" Quotes from Famous Books



... a quarry/With thousands] Why a quarry? I suppose, not because he would pile them square, but because he would give them for carrion to the birds ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... menacing one, the scorner utterly crush'd beneath you, The menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced with his senseless scorn, bearing the murderous knife, The wide-swelling one, the braggart that would yesterday do so much, To-day a carrion dead and damn'd, the despised of all the earth, An offal rank, to ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... passage, but, somehow or other, several barrels of meat were found spoiled on opening, and had been thrown overboard soon after leaving home, as a sanitary measure. Afterwards the crew of the Borgmester Dahl thought of that rotten carrion with tears of ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad

... jay, a carrion bird about the size Of a robin that is generally known through the north as the "whiskey jack," had always hovered about our camps and been very tame when, in the earlier days of our trip, we had refuse to ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... she knew too well that such an atrocity was easy and common enough. She knew it well. Why should she not? The story of the Cid's Daughters and the Knights of Carrion; the far more authentic one of Robert of Belesme; and many another ugly tale of the early middle age, will prove but too certainly that, before the days of chivalry began, neither youth, beauty, nor the sacred ties of matrimony, could protect women from the most ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... beneath such grace and high-bred leisure that Nature hides in her creatures the occupation of scavenger and carrion-eater! ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... England upon all peaceful public benefactors, and upon all the leaders of all the Arts and Sciences, with all their works to testify for them, during two centuries at least—he, the shining wonder, the new constellation to be followed by the wise men bringing gifts, until it stopped over a certain carrion at the bottom of a bath and disappeared—was simply the greatest Forger and the greatest Thief that ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... he was, he endured a period of mental agony which took all the heart out of him. He understood the methods of the prairie so well that he feared the very worst. A tree—a lariat—and he saw, in fancy, a crowd of carrion swarming round his swinging body. He could conceive no other object, and his nerves became ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... just as day was breaking, the Patin woman distinctly heard a loud, deep, roaring voice calling: "Are you going to get up, carrion?" ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... death, that art joint-twin To sweetest slumber! no rough-bearded comet Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl Bears not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse, Whilst horror ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... Nay, it needs no apology To say you are out in your new ornithology. The Vultures are carrion-birds, be it said; And the Man and the Cause you detest are not dead! Much as his decease was desired, he's alive, And the Cause is no carcase. So, JOE, you must strive To get nearer the truth. Shall we help you? All fowls ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various

... Mr. Jeremiah: 'Now, may the sweetest of all thunderbolts——But, rascal, this instant what's to pay? then take thy carrion out of the stable, and be off.' So saying, Mr. Schnackenberger strode to the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... read the dazzling account of the streets of Ferrara thick with corpses; of Padua, of Bassano streaming blood; of the wells chokeful of carrion, of him who catches in his spur, as he is kicking his feet when he sits on the well and singing, his own mother's face by the grey hair; of the sack of Vicenza in the fourth book; of the procession of the envoys of the League through the streets of Ferrara, with ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... carrion. Get along, what do you mean by it? I'll give it to you!" shouted the policeman. He was evidently tired, and he had had too much of her. She advanced a few paces, and ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... roused by the blowing of his horn, Our backs no longer he will score; He no more will feed us on cotton-seeds and corn; For his reign of oppression now is o'er. He no more will hang our children on the tree, To be ate by the carrion crow; He no more will send our wives to Tennessee; For he's ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... and grows fat on the frontiers. The bulky frame, the cropped black hair, the predatory eyes that looked like two blaster muzzles. They were all familiar to Pop. Kane was all steel and meanness. The kind of carrion bird that took what others had worked for. Not big time, you understand. In another age he'd have been a torpedo—a hireling killer. But out among the stars he was working for himself. And ...
— Turnover Point • Alfred Coppel

... in order to obtain forage, were obliged to move along several lines of route. Sir David Baird's division joined them as they advanced, and when they reached the Carrion their effective force amounted to 23,583 men, with sixty pieces of artillery. On the French side, Soult had—on hearing of the British advance to the north-east, by which, if successful, they would cut the French lines of communication between Madrid and the frontier—called ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... panthers not one whit more ferocious or cruel than the denizens of these pretty villages, these dewy lawns, and these charming shores. After lauding in funeral celebrations the good, the great, the immortal Marat, whose body, thank God! they cast into the common sewer like carrion that he was, and always had been; after performing these funeral rites, to which each man brought an urn into which he shed his tears, behold! our good Bressans, our gentle Bressans, these poultry-fatteners, suddenly decided that the Republicans were all ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... King nor Kaiser! I shook the minions' grasp from my shoulder, I flashed my sword in their eyes; and not till the crescent of weapons encircled me in one blinding gleam, vain grew defence, vain honor, vain bravery. Of what use was my soul to me thenceforth? I became but carrion prey. I fell, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... thousand naked Indians who called themselves Red Sticks because of the wands carried by their fanatical prophets. Two hundred and fifty scalps were carried away on poles, and when troops arrived they found nothing but heaps of ashes, mutilated bodies, and buzzards feeding on the carrion. ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... these golden spurs of knighthood with your sword, archer! 'Twas I who gave them, and I who take them back. Ha! they fly across the hall, and with them every bond betwixt you and the worshipful order whose sign and badge they are! Now lead him out on the heath afar from the house where his carrion can best lie, and hew his scheming head from his body as a ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Cairnes had to be knocked insensible before the heathen finally mastered him. I believed the obstinate fellow dead, so ghastly white appeared his usually florid face as the victorious savages dragged him roughly past where I lay, flinging his heavy body down like carrion upon the rocks. De Noyan appeared badly cut, his gallant clothing clinging to him in fluttering rags, silent witnesses to the manliness of his struggle. Yet the Chevalier was ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... of the Audiencia inform the king of the instructions they have given to Legazpi, and their orders that he should direct his course straight to the Philippines, which they regard as belonging to Spain rather than Portugal. In this same year, Juan de la Carrion, recently appointed admiral of the fleet, writes to the king, dissenting (as does the Audiencia) from Urdaneta's project for first exploring New Guinea, and urging that the expedition ought to sail directly to the Philippines. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair

... should not be putrid. How exactly do the Gipsies imitate them in this abhorrent choice of food! They have been in the habit of eating many kinds of brutes, not even excepting dogs and cats; and when pressed by hunger, have sought after the most putrid carrion. It has been a common saying among them—that which God kills, is better than that killed by man. But of late years, with a few exceptions, they have much improved in this respect; for they now eat neither dogs nor cats, and but seldom seek after carrion. But in winter they will ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb

... he dallies any longer," said a third, "and down with the carrion monks who would bar us of our privilege!" A general shout followed. "Ay, ay, our privilege! our privilege! down with the doors, and with the lurdane monks, if ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... their boss the little mob stopped. Then the Irishman spoke in a voice that rumbled and shook with menacing rage. "Ye, Manuel an' Pedro—drag that carrion off the right-av-way, an' tell him when he wakes up av he values his life to shtay out av rache av me two hands. The rest av ye hombres git the hell ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... was of no account. As a piece of fast-decaying carrion he would be the centre of a piece of elaborate ceremonial! His troop would parade in full dress and (save for a firing-party of twelve who would carry carbines) without arms. A special black horse would be decked out with a pall of black velvet and black ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... repented of and corrected. "Remember not," said a man who knew human nature well, "the sins of my youth." But there are men whose nature has a peculiar affinity for anything petty, mean, and bad. They fly upon it as a vulture on carrion. Their memory is of that cast, that you have only to make inquiry of them concerning any of their friends, to hear of something not at all to the friends' advantage. There are individuals, after listening ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... The eagle, which soars so proudly at the sun, will return to its eyrie with drooping wing; the condor, whose shadow falls from afar on Chimborazo's alabaster brow, cannot live always in the empyrean, a thing ethereal, and back to earth is no better than a carrion crow. To genius more than to aught else, perhaps, distance lends enchantment. While we see only the bold outline of the Titan, we are content to worship— nay, insist upon it; but having scrutinized him inch by inch with a microscope, we realize that familiarity ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... when he comes like a woman, With lovely, smiling eyes, Black dreams float over his golden head Like a swarm of carrion flies. ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer

... Old-Jew ones which have now gone out. Once more, a tragic pilgrimage for all mortals; and for the young pious soul, winged with genius, and passionately seeking land, and passionately abhorrent of floating carrion withal, more tragical than for any!—A pilgrimage we must all undertake nevertheless, and make the best of with our respective means. Some arrive; a glorious few: many must be lost,—go down upon the floating wreck which they took for land. Nay, courage! These also, so far as ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... And then, the tiny insect, the ant—that living, silent monitor to unregarding men—doth it not make its own galleries, build with toilsome art its own abiding place? Does not the mole scratch its own chamber—the carrion kite build its own nest! Shall cuckoos and Members of Parliament alone be lodged at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... Bald Eagle; "you and I are somewhat alike, for though I chiefly fish for a living I also kill the young of large animals, and even eat carrion when game is scarce. But as it is unusual for a judge to condemn himself, I think I must go free; and as there are not very many of either of us, it really ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... to make carrion of myself in national quarrels! Was I the man to sacrifice my glorious life because besotted and third-rate minds, blinded by their own ignorance and fooled by cleverer statesmen than themselves, had suffered England to drift into war with Germany? Was I a sheep to be slaughtered ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... Persian, whose "Rubah" can never be mistaken for "Shaghal." "Sa'lab" among the Semites is locally applied to either beast and we can distinguish the two only by the fox being solitary and rapacious, and the jackal gregarious and a carrion-eater. In all Hindu tales the jackal seems to be an awkward substitute for the Grecian and classical fox, the Giddar or Kola (Cants aureus) being by no means sly and wily as the Lomri (Vulpes vulgaris). This is remarked by Weber (Indische Studien) and Prof. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... up at Bear Portage and had supper. Afterward, three breed boys with their scent for happenings in the bush, as unerring and mysterious as the buzzard's scent for carrion, turned up from nowhere, and at the same time a fourth came nosing under the bank in a crazy dugout filled with grass. So soft was the arrival of the last that Garth was not aware of it, until he happened to catch sight of Mary Co-que-wasa deep ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... pistols" like tigers for their prey; some climbing into the tops of the trees the better to take aim at the rescuers below; and when hit themselves frequently lodging in the branches, where they continued to hang a convenient carrion for the foul birds ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... all come, like crows that smell carrion. How odious is the selfishness of this world! But here is Mr Gumarabic. How do you do, sir? (Curtsies with a ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... highly excited rabble. "Shove the boats off, half a dozen of you!" I ordered. "Some of you others take up that carrion there and throw it into the sea. The gold upon it is for your pains. You there with the wounded shoulder you have no great hurt. I'll salve it with ten pieces of eight from the captain's own share, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... his hands and feet for fifty yards along the narrow gap between the ceiling of the galleries and the earth with which they were filled, and reached the cubiculum nearly suffocated. Here, by means of a skylight which was not obstructed by rubbish, he found that the place was used as a deposit for carrion, as the half-putrefied carcass of a bull was ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... jeered one of the knights, 'that was two months agone, and thou hast something more by now. Will this loose thy secret, carrion?' ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... would be a flock of these carrion feeders, that are not averse to fresh-killed meat when it is to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... last, Thy soft lips cannot kiss away: oh, girl! O Chitra! you that know of fairyland! Where tether they that swift steed of the tale? My palace for one day upon his back, To ride and ride and see the spread of the earth! Nay, if I had yon callow vulture's plumes— The carrion heir of wider realms than mine— How would I stretch for topmost Himalay, Light where the rose-gleam lingers on those snows, And strain my gaze with searching what is round! Why have I never seen and never sought? Tell me what lies beyond our ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... sort leaks out—and it does so fast enough—all enemies, male and female, rush in with renewed strength, making for the vulnerable point, in the hope of securing my overthrow. These good people are like carrion vultures—I myself am the carrion—they can scent from afar that there is something for them to do, and come flying to the spot. And the lies they invent and the intrigues they contrive, with a view to increasing existing differences—really, they are worthy of ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... flayed, and the carcass left for dogs and birds to feed upon; but, says the narrative, before much of it was consumed, it was discovered by a poor family (whose name and residence are given), and by them used as food. Father, mother and six children prolonged life for a week upon this disgusting carrion, and even regretted the loss of it, when the supply failed; and the poor mother said to the person who made the fact public, "the Lord only knows what I will now do for my starving children, since it is ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... no better than the croaking of your carrion crow," said the elder lady: "these are not like the songs we used to hear in hall and bower at Dunham Massey. Then "—the old lady forgetting that her own ears had played her false, and her relish for these ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... should I forget The day I saw him first? (You know the one.) I had been laughing in the market-place With others like me, I the youngest there, Jostling about a pack of mountebanks Like flies on carrion (I the youngest there!), Till darkness fell; and while the other girls Turned this way, that way, as perdition beckoned, I, wondering what the night would bring, half hoping: If not, this once, a child's sleep in my garret, At ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... on further till the evening, and passed other skeletons of moose and carribboo deer, picked clean by the carrion-birds. They saw the marks of many fires, and the remains of a large encampment, deserted perhaps three weeks before. Some of the older hunters said that, from the prints of the snow-shoes, they knew the Mic-Mac Indians of New Brunswick ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... carrion meat," shouted Phormio, shaking his fists under the helpless creature's nose. "Honest men have their day at last. There's a gay hour coming before Zeus claps the lid over you ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... to have been elected to do the scavenger work in this town," he said. "But I'm going to leave it to you gentlemen to take the carrion away. Shorty, I'm going back to the house. Are you ready ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... speed that ten of them arrived at Saragossa by the Feast of the Assumption; a very short time after their departure, Bernard de Quintavalle, who was sent into this kingdom after the chapter of 1216 had established two convents, the one at Toledo, the other at Carrion de los Condes, a town in the Kingdom of Leon. Some of his companions had been admitted at Lerida, and at Balaguer, in Catalonia, under very extraordinary circumstances, which are omitted not to be ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... Princess; and I give you my word of honour as a gentleman and an old man, that when my book of travels shall appear it shall not contain so much as the name of Grunewald. And yet it was a racy chapter! But had your Highness only read about the other courts! I am a carrion crow; but it is not my fault, after all, that the world ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... seamen, without wage, powder, or food, Are yet on fire to fight for her. Your ships Tossing in the great sunset of an Empire, Dawn of a sovereign people, are all manned By heroes, ragged, hungry, who will die Like flies ere long, because they have no food But turns to fever-breeding carrion Not fit for dogs. They are half-naked, hopeless Living, of any reward; and if they die They die a dog's death. We shall reap the fame While they—great God! and all this cannot quench The glory in their eyes. They will be ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... preface, "take and read! He has answered me! Who? Luther, of course! He—the man whose mind reeks like carrion, and whose practices are damnable—has answered my book, The Babylonish Captivity. Take and read what he says, and tell me if you have ever ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... where the road should have crossed a stream—not wide, but strong, smooth, and very deep. The stream ran through a glen; and above the road I had long noted the towers of a castle. But as I drew closer, I saw first that the walls were black with fire and roofless, and that carrion birds were hovering over them, some enemy having fallen upon the place: and next, behold, the bridge was broken, and there was neither ford nor ferry! All the ruin was fresh, the castle still smouldering, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... gross superstitions by means of which he imposed upon others. Still, being accustomed to act as a leader on such occasions, he felt humiliated at feeling himself in the situation of a vulture marshalled to his prey by a carrion-crow."Let me, however, hear this story to an end," thought Dousterswivel, "and it will be hard if I do not make mine account in it better as ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... carrion, if you want to. But I think you can do no more than order it to be flung into a ditch ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... name!" Francis Markrute said with some excitement. "In the beginning, if I could have found him I would have killed him, as you know, but now the carrion can live, since my sister is dead. He is not worth powder ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... next day out came the declaration of war. When I had read it, I drew my sword, and, as I ran my eye along its cold, sharp blade from hilt to point, I thought how strange was its power to let out a man's life, and turn him, in a moment, into a heap of inanimate carrion. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... as buzzards scent carrion, began early to discover the growing wealth of this new city, and soon a party of a dozen Franciscans, in sackcloth with downcast visages, approached the city. They came, not as religious teachers, but as spiritual scavengers, who ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... notice of the public) he must likewise be a volunteer contributor, it Would be vain for me to endeavour to prevent such a design. Whoever has been so ill advised as to throw himself on the public, must pay such a tax in a pamphlet or magazine when he dies; but, happily, the insects that prey on carrion are still more short-lived than the carcases were, from which they draw their nutriment. Those momentary abortions live but a day, and are thrust aside by like embryos. Literary characters, when not illustrious, are known only to a few literary men; and amidst ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... approached easily even by a tiger that cracked a twig with every step. It simplified the problem of living immensely; and just as any other feline would have done, she took the line of least resistance. If there had been plenty of carrion in the jungle, Nahara might never have hunted men. But the kites and the jackals looked after the carrion; and they were much swifter and keener-eyed ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... that. It generated melancholy, as a damp fire generates smoke. I felt there was something wrong around me this afternoon—a shadow of evil. The conversation died: only the flies buzzed monotonously over us, as though we were offal or carrion; and the wind blew the dust in hail-storms against the canvas walls of the tent. And then it came—the terribly evil thing. The O.C. Rest Camp entered the mess, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... sheep or dog, or a fish or fowl, being previously without at the distance of from twelve to twenty yards, the lyer-in-wait watches patiently for the descent of the eagle, and, the moment it has fairly settled upon the carrion, fires. In this manner, multitudes of eagles are yearly destroyed in Scotland. The head, claws, and quills, are kept by the shepherds, to be presented to the factor at Martinmas or Whitsunday, for the premium of from half-a-crown to five shillings which is usually ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various

... a grey old crow Was pecking some carrion down below; A poor little lamb, half alive, half-dead, And the crow at each peck turned up its head With a cunning glance at the linnet above— What a demon is Liberty ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... subject to the bone, without once relinquishing a point. An engineer by trade, Mackay believed in the unlimited perfectibility of all machines except the human machine. The latter he gave up with ridicule for a compound of carrion and perverse gases. He had an appetite for disconnected facts which I can only compare to the savage taste for beads. What is called information was indeed a passion with the man, and he not only delighted to receive it, but could pay ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... record that, accompanied by Middleton, I watched at an alligator's hole with a rifle, but the beast would not come out, perhaps luckily for me, if I missed a stomach shot; that I was prevented from bringing down a carrion vulture, it being illegal to kill those useful scavengers; that I caught some dear little green tree frogs; that I noted how the rice-fields had become a poisonous marsh; that I noticed the extensive strata of guano and fossil bone pits, securing some large dragon's teeth, and with ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... grotesque enough; the banquet of birds and beasts who feed on the skin of Pharsalia is even worse. [66] The details are too loathsome to quote. Suffice it to say that the list includes every carrion-feeder among flesh and fowl who ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... grinned. "'Storm is a word that an old salt reserves for one of those hurricanes that blow a field of turnips flat, and teeth down your throat. You can turn round and lean your back against it like a post; and a carrion-crow making for the next parish gets fanned into another ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... search for the carrion of a cormorant, with only the skeleton remaining, for your wife ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown

... prowling jackals kept up a running chorus of yapping—a discordant chant punctuated now and then by the far-away howl of a hunting wolf; or, by the choking "laugh" of a hyena in the valley below, who thus gave forth the news of some especially delicious bit of carrion discovered among the rocks. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... the tower of the Castle, from which a beam protruded, laden at that moment with a ghastly burden just discernible in the thickening gloom. He named it well when he called it his "flagstaff," and the miserable banner of carrion that hung from it was a fitting pennon for the ruthless Governor of Cesena. Worthy was he to have worn the silver hauberk of Werner von Urslingen with its motto, "The enemy of God, of pity ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... the Pampas of South America, no sooner has the sportsman brought down a deer than the air is filled with myriads of vultures winging their way towards the carcass, though a few minutes before not a feather was stirring. The long-sightedness of these Indians resembles that of the carrion bird itself,* while their rapacity and recklessness of blood is fully equal to ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... again other birds, dark, quick-winged, low-flying, shot in among the white companies of sea-gulls, stretching their long necks, and turning their swift, cowardly eyes here and there, the cruel beak extended, the body gorged with carrion. Black marauders among blithe birds of peace and joy, they watched like sable spirits near the nests, or on some near sea rocks, sombre and alone, blinked evilly at the tall bright cliffs and the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... wanted only when she smiled, was gay, and beautiful; who must weep alone and in silence, in silence, with never a sympathetic shoulder to weep upon after they sold her from her mother's side. Tied in a bag, going she knew not whither, thrown in a carriage like so much carrion, in these indignities she only wept in silence, for her lord, the man, must not be discomposed. Like the timorous, helpless wild things of the woods whose joys and sorrows must ever be voiceless lest the bloody tyrants of their domain come, who even in the crunch of death ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... of the European gypsy, which are out of keeping with the habits of warriors, and of a daring Aryan race which withstood the caliphs. Grubbing in filth as if by instinct, handling corpses, making baskets, eating carrion, being given to drunkenness, does not agree with anything we can learn of the Jats. Yet the European gypsies are all this, and at the same time "horsey" like the Jats. Is it not extremely probable that during the "out-wandering" the Dom ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... cartridge shells. Walking cat-footed, he made no sound but suddenly three buzzards rose on heavy wings and he went swiftly to where they had been squatting. A dead man lay up against the cliff, a saddle blanket thrown over his face. This had held off the carrion birds. The body was limp and still warm, it had been a corpse only a short time. Sandy ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... though nominally Buddhists. They are compelled to stand aside on the road when any traveller passes them; and they fall on their knees when they address any man of recognised caste. Their habits are dirty in the extreme; and they eat any food, even carrion, which comes in their way. They are, indeed, like the Cagots of France; and as little is known of the cause which reduced their ancestors to their present degraded state as in the instance of the last-named race. One thing ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... banner of complete solidarity, we will march forward, a solid phalanx against which no force can stand. Now that our own house is swept clean of vermin—rid forever of carrion like Lenster and his ...
— The Clean and Wholesome Land • Ralph Sholto

... lay everywhere, in houses and streets, and even in the temples; half-dead sufferers gathered around the springs, tortured by violent thirst; the very dogs that meddled with the corpses died of the disease; vultures and other carrion birds avoided the city as if by instinct. Many bodies were burnt or buried with unseemly haste, many doubtless left to fester where they lay. Misery, terror, despair, overwhelmed all within the walls, while the foe without drew back in equal terror, lest the pestilence should leap the walls and assail ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... the sand-beds and some over the grassy plains. As he searched about the fires he saw the wolves seated on the distant hills waiting for his departure. Having looked in vain for his knife, he mounted again and left the wolves and the vultures to banquet freely upon the carrion ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Herodorus Ponticus relates that Hercules was always very joyful when a vulture appeared to him upon any action. For it is a creature the least hurtful of any, pernicious neither to corn, fruit-tree, nor cattle; it preys only upon carrion, and never kills or hurts any living thing; and as for birds, it touches not them, though they are dead, as being of its own species, whereas eagles, owls, and hawks mangle and kill their own fellow-creatures; yet, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... fact. "Camels, tents, and Arabs! The rascals have loaded their beasts already, and most probably have gone to hide their plunder, that they may be back and make sure of a second haul, before any of their precious brother vultures, up in the sands, get a scent of the carrion. D—n the rogues; I thought at one time they had me in a category! Well, joy be with them! Mr. Monday, I return you my hearty thanks for the manly, frank, and diplomatic manner in which you have discharged the duties of your ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... Let each man do whatever he knows best! But for that liberty must be given to man—complete freedom! Since there has come a time, when everyraw youth believes that he knows everything and was created for the complete arrangement of life—give him, give the rogue freedom! Here, Carrion, live! Come, come, live! Ah! Then such a comedy will follow; feeling that his bridle is off, man will then rush up higher than his ears, and like a feather will fly hither and thither. He'll believe ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... will furnish us with another parallel case. Mariana, the classical historian of Spain, tells the story of the ill-starred marriage which the King Don Alonso brought about between the heirs of Carrion and the two daughters of the Cid. The Cid bestowed a princely dower on the sons-in-law. But the young men were base and proud, cowardly and cruel. They were tried in danger, and found wanting. They fled before the Moors, and once, when a ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... spat full into my breast, the vileness running down the sacred sign. Then, as a fiendish look filled his face, he ordered the chief eunuch to send me for sale in any market that would be open for such carrion. ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... he gave to rich folk, millet to the poor, Broken scraps for holy men that beg from door to door; Battle to the tiger, carrion to the kite, And rags and bones to wicked wolves without the wall at night. Naught he found too lofty, none he saw too low— Parbati beside him watched them come and go; Thought to cheat her husband, turning Shiv to jest— Stole the little grasshopper ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... in considering the lucubrations of the poet Baudelaire, and his necrophile imagination of his own carrion hung on a gibbet and devoured by vultures, as a mixture of sadism and masochism. He sought out the most repulsive women of all races, Chinese, negresses, dwarfs, giants, or modern women as artificial as possible, to satisfy his pathological instinct. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... I attempted it, and they should stand by me, which is questionable,—for I have met them fleeing from the town,—my life would pay the forfeit. Alive, I may be of some use to you, and you are welcome to my life in that way,—I am giving it freely. Dead, I should be a mere lump of carrion. Who remembers even the names of those who have been done to death in the Southern States for the ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... moral imperfection fifty miles away. The crow has no faculty compared with this for finding carrion. It has scented something a hundred miles off, and before night "treed" its game. It has a great genius for smelling. It can find more than is actually there. When it begins to snuff the air, you had better look out. It has great length and breadth and ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... with, and buy some we'pon with the money, if it be only the barrel of a horseman's pistol. By industry and care, you might thus come to some prefarment; for by this time, I should think, your eyes would plainly tell you that a carrion crow is a better bird than a mocking-thresher. The one will, at least, remove foul sights from before the face of man, while the other is only good to brew disturbances in the woods, by cheating the ears of all ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... the valleys; the water was subsiding; here and there corpses lay in the mud. Old trenches everywhere; thousands of rudely heaped graves, marked by two crossed sticks; miles on miles of rusty barbed-wire defenses, with dead cows or horses entangled in them, slowly rotting, haunted by the carrion crows. ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke

... persons being afterwards brought to trial at the assizes, an old minister swore that, the body being taken out of the grave and laid on the grass, the accused were required to touch it. On laying their hands on the brow, which before was of a livid and carrion colour, it began to have a dew or gentle sweat upon it, which increased by degrees until the sweat ran down the face. The brow then turned to a lifelike and flesh colour, and the dead woman opened one of her eyes and shut it again, and this opening the eye was done three times. She likewise thrust ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... had been trampled flat for an irregular patch, with a trail of broken stalks out of the heart of the plain. At one side was a buzzing, seething mass of glitter-winged insects which Travis already knew as carrion eaters. They arose reluctantly from their feast as ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... the church for peace; And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: —Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South He graced his carrion with. God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 20 One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk; And I ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... in the gap, where he could escape from the cycle, where the end of the causes, where an eternity without suffering began. He killed his senses, he killed his memory, he slipped out of his self into thousands of other forms, was an animal, was carrion, was stone, was wood, was water, and awoke every time to find his old self again, sun shone or moon, was his self again, turned round in the cycle, felt thirst, overcame the ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse

... it. Query. Is it not strange, that we see daily the Limbs of Horses hung up in Trees, and they do not stink, but remain good a long while fit for Dogs Meat? If any one will say, that Dogs all delight to eat Carrion, I must deny that; but that every sort of Dog will roll himself in Carrion, when he can find it, ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... more interesting characteristics than the Common Crow, being, in many of his actions, very like the Raven, especially in his love for carrion. Like the Raven, he has been known to attack game, although his inferior size forces him to call to his assistance the aid of his fellows to cope with larger creatures. Rabbits and hares are frequently the prey of this bird which pounces on them as they steal abroad to feed. His food ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... guard peered through the grating, and seeing what he was doing, entered, and put handcuffs upon him, after first removing the raw flesh to a point where he could see, but not touch it. And there it lay, torturing him while he starved. And there it lay until it became carrion, and tortured him again. And then they had dragged him out again, out under the blue sky, where the trees—the old sweet-smelling pines—were waving their purple plumes upon the distant mountains, and the wild grape filled ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... laid between us. In this treaty, whatever it shall be, our old enemies the federalists, and their new friends, will find enough to carp at. This is a thing of course, and I should suspect error where they found no fault. The buzzard feeds on carrion only. Their rallying point is 'war with France and Spain, and alliance with Great Britain': and every thing is wrong with them which checks their new ardor to be fighting for the liberties of mankind; on the sea always excepted. There one nation is to monopolize ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... at this carrion! One may as well see upon whom our friend here has put his mark." So saying he stooped and turned over the man, the first of the two who had fallen. He lay half in a stagnant pool of water, and was quite dead, as we could see, for the moon fell clearly on his evil and distorted face ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... Pia, who attests many of her miracles of this description, relates, that her sanctity extended even to the horse which she rode, insomuch, that, when the body of the beast was thrown, after its death, as carrion to the dogs, they all refused to touch it; and the monks, in commemoration of the miracle, employed the skin for a covering to the church door, where it remained till the ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... by an unfrequented track known to Fritz, half leading, half carrying him the while. The din and the horrid clamour grew fainter in their ears. No pursuing footsteps gave them cause to pause to defend themselves. The centre of excitement round the fort drew the human wolves, as carrion draws vultures. The forest was dim and silent and deserted as the fugitives ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... And in this book, which here you may peruse, Abroad they fly, resolved to try the same Adventure in their flight; and thee, sweet dame, Both she and I for our protection choose; I by my vow, and she by farther right Under your phoenix (wing) presume to fly; That from all carrion beaks in safety might By one same wing be shrouded, she and I. O happy, if I might but flitter there Where you and she and I ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable

... A carrion crow, perceiving a brood of fourteen chickens under the care of the parent-hen, on a lawn, picked up one; but on a young lady opening the window and giving an alarm, the robber dropped his prey. In the course of the day, however, the plunderer returned, accompanied ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst

... the world and isolated from anything that might have promised relief. In the branches innumerable large, glossy blackbirds kept up a maddening chatter, and higher above, up in the hot sky, the omnipresent buzzards floated lazily, awaiting sight of possible carrion prey. Animals began to appear almost underfoot, coons and rabbits, disturbed for the first time in their fastness. Water holes appeared rarely, and the water in them was unfit for drinking. Despite the ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen

... the ground he then Skillfully piles up the scattered parts Of the graceful body, gathers the bones, 270 Which the funeral fire aforetime devoured; Then brings altogether the bones and the ashes, The remnant of the flames he arranges anew, And carefully covers that carrion spoil With fairest flowers. Then he fares away, 275 Seeking the sacred soil of his birthplace. With his feet he fastens to the fire's grim leavings, Clasps them in his claws and his country again, The sun-bright seat, he seeks in joy, His own native-land. ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... in bringing up my journal; interrupted by two of these most sedulous visitants who had objects of their own to serve, and smelled out my arrival as the raven scents carrion—a vile comparison, though what better is an old fellow, mauled with rheumatism and other deplorables? Went out at two and saw Miss Dumergue and other old friends; Sotheby in particular, less changed ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... or three civet cats; but their flesh is the worst of carrion. We saw abundance of elephants at a distance, and observed they always go in very good company, that is to say, abundance of them together, and always extended in a fair line of battle; and this, they say, is the way they defend themselves from their enemies; for if lions or tigers, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... funeral pyre is erected of dry wood, on which the body of the dead is laid, and in course of time after igniting the faggots the corpse is consumed. While this cineration is going on vultures and carrion fowl not infrequently pounce down upon the body, and tear away pieces of flesh from the ghastly, smoking corpse. These charred parts of the body they carry away to their nests to feast upon at leisure. But oftentimes dire results follow; the home of ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green

... worms without brains and walking bellies filled with carrion!" he said magnificently. "I have orders which I am ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett

... greater distance, seeming to know we were looking at them with greedy eyes. George told us that their flesh had saved many an Indian from starvation, and that the Indians looked upon them with a certain veneration and would kill them only in case of the direst need. Our compunctions against eating carrion birds had entirely disappeared, and the course of the whiskey jacks in holding aloof from camp when they were most needed used ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... said affably. "Sorry I could not get the other chap for you, but I meant having Turnditch. The dirty rascal has sent his last lad to the gallows. Faugh! I could spit on his carrion." ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... the creature we had seen,— which, though it might not be of extraordinary size, would, if it were a hyena, prove an ugly customer should it take us unawares. Otherwise, we had no reason to dread it. Such creatures, indeed, seldom attack human beings unless first assailed, as they five on carrion, and act ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston

... the love and power of sin, so that it becomes growingly distasteful, and the soul turns with loathing from the carrion on which it once fed contentedly. This begets a sense of purity, robed in which the soul claims kinship to the white-robed saints of the presence-chamber, and reaches out toward the blessedness of the pure in heart who see God. There is still a positive rain of smut and filth in ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... soft crescendo of a hyena's howl some place off in the night. It was answered by another, miles away; then another, far off in a still different direction. The scent of the bait was spreading to the far horizon and the keen-scented carrion-eaters had caught it and ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... here, here's charming green, and red, and blue! There's a complexion beats the ROUGE of Warren! See those red lips; oh, la! they seem so nice! What rosy cheeks then, cousin, to entice!— Compar'd to this, all other heads are carrion. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... lobbymen and contractors who, having thoroughly exploited "the old concern," now gathered to gorge upon the new. And by the hundred flocked hither those unclean birds, blinking bleared eyes at any chance bit, whetting foul bills to peck at carrion from the departmental sewer. Busy and active at all hours, the lobby of the Exchange, when the crowd and the noise rose to the flood at night, smacked no little of pandemonium. Every knot of men had its grievance; every flag in the pavement was a rostrum. Slowness of organization, the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... delinquents, he had called out. A shot rang from the underbush; another shot; and La Salle reeled forward dead, with a bullet wound gaping in his forehead. The body of the man who had won a new empire for France was stripped and left naked, a prey to the foxes and carrion birds. So perished Robert Cavelier de ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... distrust in America; he reaped distrust from the Englishmen who had bought his honor. He sowed treason; he reaped infamy. He sowed contempt for the colonists, and, dying, he reaped the contempt from his old friends, who counted his body carrion. For the harvests of the soul represent not arbitrary degrees, but the workings of natural law. If Ceres, the goddess of harvests, makes the sheaf to reap the seed, conscience, recalling man's career, ordains that like produces like. What a man soweth that ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... first taste of animal food I had had for about ten months. So keen was my appetite that I could have relished any cooked carrion even, if it had come in my way. I also got potatoes, the very skins of which I devoured with great gusto. It was very curious that at this time I preferred salt to sugar, or anything that was sweet, and I used to suck little lumps of salt for the first few days I had the opportunity of doing so ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous

... and a heavy surf, tumbling and breaking at the mouth of the river, prevented the boat from getting out. Horrors increased upon them. The mangled bodies of Diego Tristan and his men came floating down the stream, and drifting about the harbor, with flights of crows, and other carrion birds, feeding on them, and hovering, and screaming, and fighting about their prey. The forlorn Spaniards contemplated this scene with shuddering; it appeared ominous ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... O, I shall have instantly my Vulture, Crow, Raven, come flying hither, on the news, To peck for carrion, my she-wolfe, and all, Greedy, and full ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... has perhaps the darkest plumage of all the eagles. This species does not live up to its name. It feeds largely on carrion, and probably never catches anything larger than a rat. The imperial eagle is common about Mussoorie except in the rains. Captain Hutton states that he has seen as many as fifty of them together in the month of October when they ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... said Menteith, "breaking the face, and trampling on the body, of many a better man than himself; and as eager on his sordid spoil as a vulture that stoops upon carrion. Yet this man the world calls a soldier—and you, my lord, select him as worthy of the honours of chivalry, if such they can at this day be termed. You have made the collar of knighthood the decoration of ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... to her country. Hear me, Paris: For every false drop in her bawdy veins A Grecian's life hath sunk; for every scruple Of her contaminated carrion weight A Troyan hath been slain; since she could speak, She hath not given so many good words breath As for her Greeks ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... so ronk at rebel wat[gh] eu{er}; He wat[gh] colored as e cole, corbyal vn-trwe. 456 & he fonge[gh] to e fly[gh]t, & fa{n}ne[gh] on e wynde[gh], Houe[gh] hy[gh]e upon hy[gh]t to herken tyy{n}ges. [Sidenote: The raven "croaks for comfort" on finding carrion.] He crouke[gh] for comfort when carayne he fynde[gh]; Kast vp on a clyffe er costese lay drye, 460 He hade e smelle of e smach & smolt{es} eder sone, [Sidenote: He fills his belly with the foul flesh.] Falle[gh] on e foule flesch & fylle[gh] his wombe, & sone [gh]ederly for-[gh]ete [gh]ister-day ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various

... forthwith turned his steed, and riding back a few paces, found Crabshaw rising from the ground. When he asked what was become of his horse, he answered in a whimpering tone, "Horse! would I could once see him fairly carrion for the hounds—for my part, I believe as how 't is no horse, but a devil incarnate; and yet I've been worse mounted, that I have—I'd like to have rid a horse that was foaled of ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... it—four men and eight men With the edges of Skrymir to aid me I have urged to their flight from the battle. Now the singer, the steward of Odin, Hath smitten at last even Bersi With the flame of the weapon that feedeth The flocks of the carrion crows." ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... stood in a swampy-field of battle, With bones and skulls I made a rattle To frighten the wolf and carrion crow And the homeless dog—but they would not go; So off I flew—for how could I bear To see them gorge their ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... are scandals as nice for the reader to nose As any old garbage of carrion crows; Our mystery-mongers are full of resource; There's a bigamy boom and a vogue of divorce; To the licence of flappers we freely allude, And we do what we can with the cult ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various

... your grace of what I purpose; And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn, To have the due and forfeit of my bond: If you deny it, let the danger light Upon your charter, and your city's freedom. You'll ask me, why I rather choose to have A weight of carrion flesh, than to receive Three thousand ducats: I'll not answer that: But, say, it is my humour:[100] Is it answer'd? What if my house be troubled with a rat, And I be pleas'd to give ten thousand ducats To have it ban'd? What, are you answer'd yet? Some men ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare

... has spent the night in drinking himself to death deliberately! We broke in this morning, for we heard him sporting like a horse; and there he was, laid over the settle: flaying and scalping would not have wakened him. I sent for Kenneth, and he came; but not till the beast had changed into carrion: he was both dead and cold, and stark; and so you'll allow it was useless making more ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... as a carrion's cry To lullaby Such as I'd sing to thee, Were I thy bride! A feather's press Were leaden heaviness To my caress. But then, unhappily, ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert

... colour) that can have any resemblance: we have none of them in England to my knowledge; if we have, they go generally under the name of eagle or erne. Neither have we the pygargus or grip, wherefore I have no occasion to treat further. I have seen the carrion crows so cunning also by their own industry of late that they have used to soar over great rivers (as the Thames for example) and, suddenly coming down, have caught a small fish in their feet and gone away withal without wetting of their wings. And even at this ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... tawny or black in hue, is free from our power. Verily, those householders who keep these things in their houses always find them free from the inroads of even the fiercest spirits that live on carrion. Those beings also, that like us range through different worlds in pursuit of pleasure, are unable to do any injury to such houses. Hence, ye deities, should men keep such articles in their houses,—articles that are destructive ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... that thrived feebly on the scattering trade that filtered through and past Mr. Hard's larger establishment. He was one of the worst phases of the male gossip, and had the scent of a buzzard for the carrion of scandal. The Allens were now the uppermost theme of the village, for there seemed some mystery about them. Moreover, the rural dabblers in vice had a natural jealousy of the more accomplished rakes from the city, which took on something of the air of virtuous indignation against ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... warned me of the evil which has befallen me, was busy retrieving his lost honour, while I was sinking into the same sorrow with himself; and, hearing of the dangerous and mysterious being, arrived at his tree in time to save me from being dragged to its roots, and buried like carrion, to nourish him for yet deeper insatiableness." I found afterwards that my conjecture was correct. I wondered how he had fared when his blows recalled the Ash himself, and ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... crossed the trail of Numa, the lion, pausing for a moment to hurl a soft fruit at the snarling face of his enemy, and to taunt and insult him, calling him eater of carrion and brother of Dango, the hyena. Numa, his yellow-green eyes round and burning with concentrated hate, glared up at the dancing figure above him. Low growls vibrated his heavy jowls and his great rage transmitted ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... elements was making a broadening sweep onward directly towards where we were. The air turned black and murky, and was vibrant with electric tension. Flocks of buzzards flew low to the earth about us, as if to be ready for the carrion of the impending catastrophe. The fear instinct of the brute seized the cattle, and they hovered together, bellowing, distraught with apprehension ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell

... have reason to know, that wolves are in the vicinity, your best way is to bait with pieces of carrion of any description. This must be done at some distance from the clearing, or you will be sure to lose your own dogs, or kill those of your neighbours, when you come to lay your poison, which you need not do till you see some of your bait taken, ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... Indians paddled {112} out to plunder what seemed to be a deserted ship. A wounded white man appeared above the hatches and waved them to come on board and trade. They came in hosts, in hordes, in flocks, like carrion-birds or ants overrunning a half-dead thing. Suddenly earth and air at Clayoquot harbour were rent with a terrific explosion, and the sea was drenched with the blood of the slaughtered savages. The only remaining white man, the wounded Lewis, had blown up the powder magazine. ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut

... winds howling o'er us; Clay-lands knee-deep spread before us; Mire and ice and snow and sleet; Aching backs and frozen feet; Knees which reel as marches quicken, Ranks which thin as corpses thicken; While with carrion birds we eat, Calling puddle-water sweet, As we pledge the health of our general, who fares as rough as we: What can daunt us, what can turn us, led to death ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley

... would not believe without seeing the footprint tracings in the sand. They are nearly all night workers, finding the days too hot and white. In mid-desert where there are no cattle, there are no birds of carrion, but if you go far in that direction the chances are that you will find yourself shadowed by their tilted wings. Nothing so large as a man can move unspied upon in that country, and they know well how the land deals with strangers. There are hints to be had here of the way in which ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... that a change might come over your heart. But that is one thing; telling a lie and living a lie is quite another. It is impossible for me to live side by side with another human being except in absolute truth. A lie, the lie, crushes what there is in me of the divine. A lie to me is carrion and corruption. Tell me, then, whether you have been and are true to me! Don't be afraid, Dorothea, and don't be ashamed. Everything may be right yet and work out as it should. But tell me: Have you been ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann



Words linked to "Carrion" :   carrion crow, carrion fungus, carrion flower



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