"Cottony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the green hill there was a brook, and at the top was a line of shady green woods. Overhead the sky was very blue, with shining heaps of cottony white clouds; a soft wind was blowing, but the sun was warm, and insects were buzzing past intent on business. A brown bird whirred by and dropped out of sight ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... apple Bark louse (Aspidiotus conchiformis, Fig. 248), whose oyster-shaped scales may be found in myriads on neglected trees, is a too familiar example. Another pest of apple trees is the woolly Blight (Eriosoma lanigera). These insects secrete from the surface of the body a downy, cottony substance which conceals the animal, and when they are, as usual, grouped together on the trees, makes them look like patches of mould. The natural insect enemies of the Plant lice now abound; such are the Lady bugs ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... out over the sunny fields a shell went milling away to send back a faint report and show a puff of cotton above the trenches to the right. It was a bit short—the next fell better. Another nod, another "Whr-r-row?/" from somewhere behind us, and this time the cottony puff was just short of the clump of trees where the Russians had concealed their battery. I picked up the spot through the glass and— one might have known !—there was One of those eternal peasants calmly swinging his scythe about fifty yards short of the spot where the shrapnel had exploded. ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... was bridged by a great fallen stone, and so over it and up a steep bent on the further side, on to a marvellously rough mountain-neck, whiles mere black sand cumbered with scattered rocks and stones, whiles beset with mires grown over with the cottony mire-grass; here and there a little scanty grass growing; otherwhere nought but dwarf willow ever dying ever growing, mingled with moss or red-blossomed sengreen; and all blending together ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... pomiferae: The bacciferae, are such as produce kernels, sorbs, cherries, holley, bays, laurell, yew, juniper, elder, &c. and all the berry-bearers. The genistae in general, and such as bear their seeds in cods, come under the tribe of siliquosae: The lanuginae are such as bed their seeds in a cottony-down. ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... down to the question of right and wrong. They were too didactic; art should never be didactic; and what is life but an art? Pater has said that so well, somewhere. With the Johnsons I am afraid I lost many opportunities; the tone was gray and cottony, I might almost say woolly. But now, as I tell you, I have determined to take right hold for myself; to look right into European life, and judge it without Johnsonian prejudices. I have taken up my residence in ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James
... cold without, and hot in the room where they sat, and the color on his cheeks resembled dabs of vermilion on buffers of old white leather; the tufts of hair above his ears had dwindled to mere cottony scraps. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... cocoa, and the white mothers under similar circumstances having it parched and ground like coffee, when it makes an exceedingly palatable and nutritious beverage. The "green-seed" or short-staple variety is far inferior to the black for this purpose, and produces white, sticky, cottony-looking butter; indeed, most dairywomen insist that "you can pick the lint out of it." The ginned cotton is carried to the platforms, where it is "specked" by the women—leaves, dirt and other impurities being picked out by hand—and spread out to dry and bleach in the sun; thence we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... of timber, occasioned by a fungus, the Merulius lachrymans, which softens wood and finally destroys it; it resembles a dry pithy cottony substance, whence the name dry-rot, though when in a perfect state, its sinuses contain drops of clear water, which have given rise to its specific Latin name. Free ventilation and cleanliness appear to be the best preservatives against this ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... my usual tactics of secreting myself near by, I had the satisfaction of seeing the tiny artist at work. It was the female, unassisted by her mate. At intervals of two or three minutes she would appear with a small tuft of some cottony substance in her beak, and alighting quickly in the nest, arrange the material she had brought, using ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... ended, and with a very serious aspect told them to look on, while he very cleverly held a tiny bee, smeared its back with a soft gum which exuded from the tree under whose shade they sat, and then touched the gum with a bit of fluffy white cottony down. ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... self-respect wounded. Children look prettier in the cheapest and simplest materials than in the richest and most elaborate. But how common is it to see the children gaily caparisoned in silk and feathers and flounces, while the mother is enveloped in an atmosphere of cottony fadiness! One would take the child to be mistress, and the mother a servant. "But," the mother says, "I do not care for dress, and Caroline does. She, poor child, would be mortified not to be dressed like ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton |
