"Bittern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... endeavoured to penetrate this solitude, but the physical exertion of pushing their way through the reeds was too great for them. If they paused to rest, they were almost suffocated in the hot and pestilent air; the only sound they could hear was the distant booming of the bittern, and a feeling of the most lonely wretchedness pervaded the scene. At length they were glad to leave this dismal region and strike to the west through a flat and monotonous district where the shells and claws of crayfish told of frequent inundations. Through this plain there ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... has long been esteemed for its bark and leaves as a [54] capital astringent, these containing much tannin; also for its fruit, which is supplied with malic and citric acids, pectin, and albumen. Blackberries go often by the name of "bumblekites," from "bumble," the cry of the bittern, and kyte, a Scotch word for belly; the name bumblekite being applied, says Dr. Prior, "from the rumbling and bumbling caused in the bellies of children who eat the fruit too greedily." "Rubus" is from the Latin ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... is bright in color, and by the aid of its long neck extracts its food from deep places on land or water: it may denote those who seek earthly profit though an external brightness of virtue. The bittern is a bird of the East: it has a long beak, and its jaws are furnished with follicules, wherein it stores its food at first, after a time proceeding to digest it: it is a figure of the miser, who is excessively careful in hoarding up the necessaries of life. The coot [*Douay: porphyrion. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... the sportsman—and the Lancashire gentlemen of the sixteenth century were keen lovers of sport—the country had a strong interest. Pendle forest abounded with game. Grouse, plover, and bittern were found upon its moors; woodcock and snipe on its marshes; mallard, teal, and widgeon upon its pools. In its chases ranged herds of deer, protected by the terrible forest-laws, then in full force: and the hardier ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... adds, specimens have been shot within the last three or four years. They seem now, however, to be confined to occasional autumnal and winter visitants. Mr. Couch says ('Zoologist' for 1871):—"On the 30th December, 1874, after a heavy fall of snow, I had a female Bittern brought to me to be stuffed, shot in the morning in the Marais; and on the 2nd of January following another was shot on the beach near the Vale Church. I had also part of some of the quill-feathers of a Bittern sent to me for identification by Mrs. Jago, which had been killed ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... flowering vines which clamber about it, and the wild flowers which abound in its neighborhood, is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with water-snakes basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond-lilies which lie on the surface. This place was held in great awe by the Indians, insomuch that the boldest hunter would not pursue his game within its precincts. Once upon a time, however, a hunter who had lost his way, penetrated ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... and stood awaiting for the sign, And heard, above the hoarse, bough-bending wind, The hill-wolf howling on the neighboring height, And bittern booming in the pool below. Some drops of rain fell from the passing cloud That sudden hides the wanly shining moon, And from the scabbard instant dropped his sword, And, with long, living leaps, and rock-struck clang, From side to side, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various |
