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Carrion   /kˈɛriən/   Listen
Carrion

noun
1.
The dead and rotting body of an animal; unfit for human food.



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"Carrion" Quotes from Famous Books



... freighters, and Duke swore again. Five billion Earthmen would read of their "generosity" to Meloa, and any guilt they felt for their desertion would vanish in a smug satisfaction at their charity. Smugness was easy in a world without dust or carrion smell or ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey

... follows the attack of these "impudent" birds upon an "unfortunate" hawk.—"He heard one day a most unusual noise, as though all the small birds of the country had joined in one grand quarrel. Looking up, he saw a large hawk (C. gouldi— a carrion feeder) being buffeted by a flock of sparrows. They kept dashing at him in scores, and from all points at once. The unfortunate hawk was quite powerless. At last, approaching some scrub, the hawk dashed into it and remained there, while the sparrows ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... Red, Dymock Red, Eggleton Styre, Kingston Black or Black Taunton, Skyrme's Kernel, Spreading Redstreak, Carrion apple, Cherry Norman, Cummy Norman, Royal Wilding, Handsome Norman, Strawberry Norman, White Bache or Norman, Broad-leaved Norman, Argile Grise, Bramtot, De Boutville, Frequin Audievre, Medaille d'Or, the last five being French sorts introduced from Normandy about 1880, and now established in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... his piece accordingly, but missed the superb monarch of the feathered tribes, who, without noticing the attempt to annoy him, continued his majestic flight to the southward. A thousand birds of prey, hawks, kites, carrion-crows, and ravens, disturbed from the lodgings which they had just taken up for the evening, rose at the report of the gun, and mingled their hoarse and discordant notes with the echoes which replied to it, and with the roar of the mountain cataracts. Evan, a little disconcerted at having ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... you, you 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 ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... also been made that these giant carnivores were carrion-eaters rather than truly predaceous. The hypothesis can hardly be effectively supported nor attacked. It is presented as a ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... and that to be completed; one thing to be begun, another to be cleared away; always in search of the peace which one never found; and if one did achieve it, then it was surrounded, like some cast carrion, by a cloud of poisonous thoughts, like buzzing blue-flies. Now at last one lived indeed; but there grew up in the soul, very gradually and sweetly, the sense that one was resting, growing accustomed to something, learning the ways of the ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson

... over his blasphemies but endeavored to drag down with him to his own perdition, all who came within the evil spell of his power. And though Tiberius came in the succession of the Caesars, and though unmatchable Tacitus has embalmed his carrion, yet do I account this Yankee Jackson full as dignified a personage as he, and as well meriting his lofty gallows in history; even though he was a nameless vagabond without an epitaph, and none, but I, narrate ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... as if nailed to the sky, or wheeled and sailed in grandeur. They were searching the landscape below to locate a hare or snake in the waving grass or carrion in the fields. The wonderful exhibitions of wing power were their expression of exultation in life, just as the song sparrow threatened to rupture his throat as he swung on the hedge, and the red bird somewhere in the thicket whistled so ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... October of 1827. On the following Tuesday I was out with my dog and gun, in pursuit of such game as I could find within the territory of Linden-Car; but finding none at all, I turned my arms against the hawks and carrion crows, whose depredations, as I suspected, had deprived me of better prey. To this end I left the more frequented regions, the wooded valleys, the corn-fields, and the meadow-lands, and proceeded to mount the steep acclivity of Wildfell, the wildest and the loftiest eminence ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... 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 lion broke out of his den, they ran and crouched ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... friction of the daily working machine to an insupportable degree. As soon as a thing of this 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, ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... 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 a useful ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston

... western sky Andy Lanning saw a black dot that moved in wide circles and came up across the heavens slowly, and he knew it was a buzzard that scented carrion and was coming up the wind toward that scent. He had seen them many a time before on their gruesome trails, and the picture which he carried was not ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand

... were busy in the vault, the three village hags, who, notwithstanding the unwonted earliness of the hour, had snuffed the carrion like vultures, were seated on the "through-stane," and engaged in their wonted ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... all. Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace; And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought 15 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 shall fill my slab ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... purpose is named, nor is it said that it returned at all. 'To and fro' may mean over the waste of waters, not back and forward to and from the ark. The raven, from its blackness, its habit of feeding on carrion, its fierceness, was a bird of ill-omen, and sending it forth has a grim suggestion that it would find food enough, and 'rest for the sole of its foot,' among the swollen corpses floating on the dark waters. The dove, on the other hand, is the emblem of gentleness, purity, and tenderness. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... young eaglet. Is it not a rare provision of nature (or fiction of poets, who have their own natural history) that the strong-winged bird can soar to the sun and gaze at it, and then come down from heaven and pounce on a piece of carrion? ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... there—at my feet, where he belongs. He was my trusted lieutenant, but he took too much upon himself. I knocked him down for insubordination. He doesn't go farther with the caravan. And we start in five hours. Zaid and Mahmoud, put this carrion out of my sight. I've shown you all what happens when black or ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... prison. Thereat I greatly marvelled, seeing that I had seen him there but just before the vermin crawled in, and straightway I suspected no good, as, indeed, it turned out; for when at last he came upon my calling him, and I told him to let this carrion be carted out which had just died in the name of the devil, he did as though he was amazed; and when I desired him that he would bear witness to the innocence of my daughter, which the old hag had confessed on her deathbed, he pretended ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... thieving, even in Cuba, it is not surprising that the fact should be remarked upon, though here the species differs somewhat from those referred to, being known as the Jack-crow or turkey-buzzard. In the far East, like the vulture, the crow is considered a natural scavenger or remover of carrion, and the same excuse is made for him in Cuba and Florida. But is he not more of a freebooter and feathered bandit,—in short, a prowling thief generally? Nature has few birds or animals upon her varied ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... influenced either for right or for wrong, but especially for the wrong; hence it is the duty of parents to select good companions for their children, and it is the duty of children to avoid bad company as they would avoid carrion or the most loathsome object. A boy with a match box in a powder magazine would be in no greater danger than in the company of most of the lads who attend our public schools and play upon the streets. It is astonishing how early children, especially boys, will sometimes learn ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... peevishness and ill-temper, at not having just the pleasant thing one happens to like. That is a state of mind which is a bird-call for all the devils; and when they see a man in that temper, they flock to him, I believe, as crows do to carrion. It is astonishing, humbling, awful, my friends, what horrible thoughts will cross one's mind if once one gives way to that selfish, proud, angry, longing temper; thoughts of which we are ashamed the next moment; temptations to sin at ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley

... up at him, and her eyes were black with hate. "Well, I do, Paul. I would like to kill one man on earth—a useless, vicious weakling, too feeble to deserve a fine death—a rotting carrion spoiling God's world and encumbering my path! I would kill him if I could—and more ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn

... execution hauing passed vpon him, a second succeeded; for both his feet were bound together, and his bodie drawne through the streets of the citie, & in fine cast into a common ditch called Houndsditch; for that the citizens threw their dead dogs and stinking carrion with other filth into it, accounting him worthie of a worse rather than of a better buriall. In such hatred was treason had, being a vice which the verie infidels and grosse pagans abhorred, else would they not haue said, Proditionem ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed

... 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 Are not Vultures. For instance, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various

... 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. ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb

... almost merciful, considering what had been done to the sky. When the train did not sneak between hills of slag, cinders, rubbish, garbage, dross and the bloody brown carrion of broken machinery, it shot like a bolt in the groove of an arbolest between unbroken barriers of advertising or through deep concrete troughs and roaring tunnels full of ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler

... 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, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... do?" he 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

... days the carcasses of whales were frequently found stranded on the beaches of Cape Cod and Long Island. Old colonial records are full of the lawsuits growing out of these pieces of treasure-trove, the finder, the owner of the land where the gigantic carrion lay stranded, and the colony all claiming ownership, or at least shares. By 1650 all the northern colonies had begun to pursue the business of shore whaling to some extent. Crews were organized, boats kept in readiness on the beach, and whenever ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... 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 mission. Without you, we might not have succeeded in getting ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... from 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 ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... 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 lying under the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... overalls that are too tight—but silent and patient all, offering no attack until the last tremor runs through the stiffening carcass and the eyes glaze over. To humans the buzzard pays a deeper meed of respect—he hangs aloft longer; but in the end he comes. No scavenger shark, no carrion crab, ever chambered more grisly secrets in his digestive processes than this big charnel bird. Such is the ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... 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 himself to be a miracle worker, ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... no right to be at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after somewhat to eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? Close thy ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... says Chapman (I., 57), "in whatever state of decomposition, is ever discarded by Bushmen." They dispute carrion with wolves and vultures. Rabbits they eat skins and all, and their menu is varied by all sorts of loathsome reptiles ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... in the courtyard of the citadel. Then, with the tiger replaced on the neck of my own elephant, we moved for home, a group of fifty horsemen now forming our escort. The headless bodies of our enemies were left as fitting spoil for the jackals and the vultures, the latter of whom, scenting the carrion, were already beginning to drop down, it might seem, from the ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... he did, the cowardly thief. If it were not for mixing the Princess's name with such carrion as he, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... 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 gone!" A fortnight ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... disclosures with respect to the smashers' system. I confess that I would have been hanged before I would have done so, after having reaped the profit of it; that is, I think so now, seated comfortably in my inn, with my bottle of champagne before me. He, however, did not show himself carrion; he would not betray his companions, who had behaved very handsomely to him, having given the son of a lord, a great barrister, not a hundred-pound forged bill, but a hundred hard guineas, to plead his cause, and another ten, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... was mounted upon a very fine horse. At first Marvel took it for granted that he was one of Sir Plantagenet's people, and he was riding past him, when he heard the stranger say, in a friendly tone, "Your horse gallops well, sir: but have a care; there's a carrion a little way farther on that may ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... characteristic features of the Priestly narrative, in the ship grounded on a rock, and in the bow set in the cloud; we have also two characteristic features of the Jehovistic narrative, in the smoking altar of sacrifice, and in the carrion bird. There is therefore manifest connection between the constellation grouping and both the narratives given ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... rest die in age, and age also dies and determines all. Nor do all these, youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise so as a Phoenix out of the ashes of another Phoenix formerly dead, but as a wasp or a serpent out of a carrion or as a snake out of dung." We can comprehend how an audience composed of men and women whose ne'er-do-weel relatives went to the theatre to be stirred by such tragedies as those of Marston and Cyril Tourneur would themselves snatch a sacred pleasure from awful language of this ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... of the world isn't for the beautiful people. It's for beef-witted squires and blear-eyed people like yourselves—brutish, callous. Your God stinks like carrion, ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... that the brain is only a crowd of little animals with teeth and claws extremely sharp, and which cling together in the contexture we behold, like the picture of Hobbes's Leviathan; or like bees in perpendicular swarm on a tree; or like a carrion corrupted into vermin, still preserving the shape and figure of the mother animal: that all invention is formed by the morsure of two or more of these animals upon certain capillary nerves which proceed from thence, whereof three branches spring into the tongue and two into the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various

... 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 county. That is ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... not, unfortunately, hear these words uttered with a sort of sombre and savage majesty. A vagabond presented his banner to Clopin, who planted it solemnly between two paving-stones. It was a pitchfork from whose points hung a bleeding quarter of carrion meat. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... 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 ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

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

... addressed them in a perfectly unprintable speech. It was delivered in unshod American—a language he had not spoken for years. It took in each individual of the whole gang, it told them they were dogs and sons of dogs, killers of men, unmentionable carrion, cayotes, kites, and that he would have hanged them each and individually with his own hands (and I believe by some legerdemain of strength he would), but that they were without hearts, souls or intellect, not responsible creatures, tools of villains that ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... reflection of its own repose, And every new alternation of the light Shedding new beauties on the scene below. Thus far in fashion, kin to Earth as Time Beareth the impress of Eternity, But differing henceforth as the gentle dove Doth from the vulture on its carrion: The dwellers on this paradisal sphere Methinks, must be of glorious lineament, Clad with the brightness of eternal youth, And buoyant with internal blessedness. Spirits that shining with untarnished light, Radiate, and make matter luminous, Filling the eyes with sweet felicity, ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... disturbance, or sight of an enemy, until we came nearly to the edge of the town and saw the glistening roof of the church appear above the foliage,—where sat sundry carrion-loving buzzards, elbowing each other, shuffling to and fro with outspread wings, and chuckling, doubtless, over the promise of glorious times. As we go on, suddenly heads appear over the bushes less than a hundred yards in front, and we hear the vindictive whistle of Minie-balls above us. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... the gaunt domestic's mysterious injunction I made the best use of my eyes as we retraced our way through the park, and for my pains had the satisfaction of beholding a solitary rabbit, half-hidden under a dock-leaf, and sundry carrion crows. ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... stock of morals and magnanimities?" He spoke to the creature, who jumped up, eager and happy, and apparently ready for orders and impatient to execute them. "Get some men; go with the dog—he will show you that carrion; and take a priest along to arrange about insurance, for death ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... A carrion crow, seeing on a lawn, a brood of fourteen chickens under the care of a mother-hen, picked up one; but when a young lady opened a window and gave the alarm, the robber dropped his prey. In the course of the day, however, the thief returned, together with thirteen other crows. Then each one ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown

... English species, and I felt confident I should find captured prey. And so I have to my delight in two bladders, with clear proof that they had absorbed food from the decaying mass. For Utricularia is a carrion-feeder, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... the Poles had broken faith. The Austrian government had sympathized with the discontent of those Poles who had fallen under Russian sway, while in Breslau it was permitted to print and publish plain words deemed criminal in Cracow and Warsaw. The dogs, in a word, behaved as dogs do over their carrion, and, having secured a large portion, kept a jealous eye ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... passed a large estancia, the road to which was marked by the dead bodies and skeletons of the poor beasts who had perished in the late droughts. Hundreds of them were lying about in every stage of decay, those more recently dead being surrounded by vultures and other carrion birds. The next canada that we crossed was choked up with the carcasses of the unfortunate creatures who had struggled thus far for a last drink, and had then not had sufficient strength left to extricate themselves from the water. Herds of miserable-looking, half-starved cattle were also to ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... 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 ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... a very poor heart in Italy!' he said, while getting his person into decent order; 'it's like the bell in the lunatic's tower between Venice and the Lido: it beats now and then for meals: hangs like a carrion-lump in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... by her, but by my own heart, which excites foul desires under the same benign influences that exalt her purity, as the carrion grows putrid by those beams which encrease the ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... found in Australia, the chief being one incorrectly called an iguana, which colloquial slang has changed to 'goanna. The 'goanna is an altogether repulsive creature. It feasts on carrion, on the eggs of birds, on birds themselves, on the young of any creature. Growing to a great size—I have seen one 9 feet long and as thick in the body as a small dog—the 'goanna looks very dangerous, and it will bite a man when cornered. Though ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox

... grip at his throat, blows rained upon his head, sharp sobbing breaths torn from his panting breast ... a red stain upon the dusty road ... a huddled figure ... silence. And he who had been a man indeed a few brief, bright years, was no more now than carrion; and he who through all his boasted aeons had not yet reached the stature of a man stood above the dead body, his face no longer menacing, but beautiful with a smiling delight in his deed. And then suddenly the spell that held the child was broken, and he leaped out upon ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

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

... next, longing to be safely outside. That is about how Wall Street felt on the memorable Friday after the Amalgamated flotation. The same feeling prevailed generally on Saturday, though I was obliged to buy a few blocks of the stock at 110 from Wall Street men whose sharp noses had sniffed a carrion scent in the air. Sunday was uncomfortable, for I realized that I might have to face bad conditions on the morrow. On Monday an ominous feeling began to rise and pervade "the Street" like a miasma mist ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... away with Greek Prose, The source of my woes! (This metre's too tough, I must draw to a close.) May Sargent be drowned In the ocean profound, And Sidgwick be food for the carrion crows!' ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray

... in the Kenyah system is occupied by BALI FLAKI, the carrion hawk, which is the principal omen bird observed during the preparation for and conduct of war. Something will be said of the cult of BALI FLAKI in a later chapter; but we would note here that this bird is peculiar among the many omen-birds of the Kenyahs, in that an ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... York and along the lakes. In the city of New York sometimes one has carried the day, and sometimes the other. When the bad element was in power, the noble State has reminded me of Tennyson's eagle caught by the talons in carrion, unable ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... godhead, false and foul As fear his dam or hell his throne: but we, Scarce hearing, heed no carrion church-wolf's howl: The corpse be theirs to mock; the ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... again, being alone, at the same place, and passed by me just as before. I had some suspicion of it then likewise, but I began to think that a neighbour of mine in the Hilltown having an ox lately dead, it might be a dog that had been at the carrion, by which I endeavoured to put the suspicion out ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... with whose bark its colour assimilates. The musk-sheep is brown and conspicuous; but it is gregarious, and its safety depends upon its ability to recognise its kind and keep with the herd. The raven is always black; but it fears no enemy and feeds on carrion, and therefore does not need concealment for either defence or attack. The colour of the sable, then, though not white, serves for concealment; the colour of the musk-sheep serves a purpose more important than concealment; the raven needs no concealment. There are thus two sets of instances:—in ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... comes from the cicadas whose monotonous note wearies the ear, and from hornets and bees of every description that keep up an incessant hum as they suck Juices from the plants or dive their antennae into the ripe fruit or perhaps into some carrion lying near. The bassoon-like sound never ceases a single instant and tells the listener how innumerable are the populations of insects which live and generate their sort under the shade of their jungle retreat. Other inexplicable noises—far off ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... 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

... belief the ancient Irish were not anthropophagi. He adds: "Whatever they may have been when their island was called Insula Sacra, there are no people in Europe who are more squeamish in the use of meats than the modern Irish peasantry, for they have a horror of every kind of carrion;" albeit he is obliged to confess that, though they abuse the French for eating frogs, and the English for eating rooks, there is evidence to prove that horseflesh was eaten in Ireland, even in the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... down at Shag's feet. "Now I know of a surety why the Flesh Feeders have fled the Boundaries; it is the Plague Year of Wapoos. This thing that should be fat, and of tender juiciness, is but a skin full of bones; there are even the plague lumps in his throat. There is almost as much poison in this carrion as in a Trapper's bait; but I must eat of it, ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser

... wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born, helps nothing. Washington was a dismal school. Even before the traitors had flown, the vultures descended on it in swarms that darkened the ground, and tore the carrion of political patronage into fragments and gobbets of fat and lean, on the very steps of the White House. Not a man there knew what his task was to be, or was fitted for it; every one without exception, Northern or Southern, was to learn his ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... said the King, "Bring Sir Guarinos forth, And in the Grange go seek ye for his grey steed of worth; His arms are rusty on the wall—seven years have gone, I judge, Since that strong horse has bent his force to be a carrion drudge. ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... berries, nuts, insects, carrion, and the like; but at times they take to killing very large animals. In fact, they are curiously irregular in their food. They will kill deer if they can get at them; but generally the deer are too quick. Sheep ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... at one time separated the Indian Carrion-Crow from Corvus corone under the name C. pseudo-corone. In his 'Catalogue' he re-unites them. I quite agree with him that ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... my sport Vain were thy cant and beggar whine, Though human spirits of thy sort Were tenants of these carrion kine!" ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... Druel. Without taking his eyes off the other men, he caught Druel with his left hand by the coat collar, and threw him half-way across the room. "Get up-stairs, you old carrion, and tell Nan Morgan, Henry de Spain is here ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... 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 ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... equipped horses to King Alfonso, as well as the tent which he had captured from the Moorish monarch. These gifts not only pleased Alfonso, but awed and silenced the courtiers, among whom were the Infantes of Carrion, who deemed it might be well to sue for the Cid's daughters, since the father was able to bestow such rich gifts. Having reached this decision, these scheming youths approached the king, who, counting upon his vassals' implicit obedience to his commands, promised ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... carrion birds had gathered in incredible numbers. The sky was full of them circling; an encompassing ring of them sat a scant fifty yards distant, their wings held half out from their bodies, as though they felt overheated. And in the ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... careless observer would mistake the one species for the other. They are nearly of the same size and colour, though the carrion-crow is of a deeper black than the buzzard; but there are other points of difference that would strike the eye of a naturalist at once. The buzzard is a much more handsomely formed bird, and is more ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... and there, saw still more 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 took ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... closer, he noticed an unpleasant smell, and near the mouth of the den he got a sudden whiff that almost gagged him—a sour, acid, carrion stink like a buzzard's nest. He moved back a little. The hole was wide and fairly high, two or three feet, but too dark to see back into. Still, he had a sense of something stirring there not too ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams

... 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

... charity's sweet sake, hand me forth a cup of cold water." The girl said she would go to the spring and fetch it. "Nay, give me the cup, and suffer me to help myself. Neither manacled nor lame, I should merit burial in the maw of carrion crows, if I laid this task upon thee." She gave him the cup, and he turned to go ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... struggle and fight till one sun is thrown into darkness, or one eagle, blind and winged, falls down the rocks and leaves the whole nest to its conqueror. The Arrapahoes would not fight a cowardly Crow, except for self-defence, for he smells of carrion; nor would ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... possess well-defined segments and are often spiny. Such a larva is evidently far less unlike its parent beetle than a caterpillar is unlike a butterfly. Perhaps of all beetle larvae, the woodlouse-like grub (fig. 12 b) of a carrion-beetle (Silpha) or of a semi-aquatic dascillid such as Helodes shows the least amount of difference from the typical adult, on account of the conspicuous jointed feelers. The larval glow-worm, however, is of the same woodlouse-like aspect, and in this case, ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter

... during which the hunters had nothing else to interest them than listening to the snarls, laughter, and growling of the carrion-eaters assembled around the pool. ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... her victims left to come back for; and even if there had been, one short day's time in the hot, steaming jungle atmosphere sufficed to cause the flesh to decay. Suma had ideas of her own about spending the days away from her proper rendezvous; and as for carrion, she never failed to give ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... thou soft natural death, that art joint-twin To sweetest slumber! no rough-bearded comet Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl Beats not against thy casement, the hoarse wolf Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse, Whilst horror waits ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... 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 humor; 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 there are love not a gaping ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... reserving to herself the right to have him turned off the stage by Jimmy, with a smack in the eye, before everybody: the footy rotter, coming there to defy her! Well, there would be no smack in the eye; she would simply hand him over to Ave Maria, as one flings a lump of carrion ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god, kissing carrion—Have you a daughter? Polonius. I have, my lord. Hamlet. Let her not walk i' the sun. Conception is a blessing; but not as your daughter ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... draining the dangerous corpse to the point of rendering it as dry and sonorous as the remains of an old slipper hardened on the refuse-heap by the frosts of winter and the heats of summer. They were working their hardest to render the carrion innocuous. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... characteristic 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 ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... him, the terms which rightly characterise his talent. They say he is like Fielding: they talk of his wit, humour, comic powers. He resembles Fielding as an eagle does a vulture: Fielding could stoop on carrion, but Thackeray never does. His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius that the mere lambent sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the summer- cloud does to the electric death-spark hid in its womb. Finally, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... over the door, setting forth the purport of the house. They are also addressed by some half-dozen other hideous small boys—whether twopenny lodgers or followers or hangers-on of such, who knows!—who, as if attracted by some carrion-scent of Deputy in the air, start into the moonlight, as vultures might gather in the desert, and instantly fall to ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... you," he snarled, "you'd better just stow your gab. You're lucky to be here yourself, let alone botherin' your thick head about anybody else, and you can kiss the Book on that! Do you know why you ain't with them carrion?" He jerked his thumb toward the beach. "It's because Solomon Anderson's your friend. Thrackles would have killed you in a minute 'count of his bit hand. I got you your chance. Now don't you be a fool, for I ain't goin' to stand between you and them another time. Besides, he won't ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... "Well, then," rejoined the stranger, "for charity's sweet sake, hand me forth a cup of cold water." The girl said she would go to the spring and fetch it. "Nay, give me the cup, and suffer me to help myself. Neither manacled nor lame, I should merit burial in the maw of carrion crows if I laid this task upon thee." She gave him the cup, and he turned to go to ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... to harm, Wheresoe'er you work your charm, By the creeks, or by the brakes, Where the pale witch feeds her snakes, And the cayman[3] loves to creep, Torpid, to his wintry sleep: Where the bird of carrion flits, And the shuddering murderer sits,[4] Lone beneath a roof of blood; While upon his poisoned food, From the corpse of him he slew Drops ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... contrasting the lovely daughter with such a tedious old fool, her father, as he, Hamlet, represents Polonius to himself:—"Why, fool as he is, he is some degrees in rank above a dead dog's carcase; and if the sun, being a god that kisses carrion, can raise life out of a dead dog,—why may not good fortune, that favours fools, have raised a lovely girl out of this dead-alive old fool?" Warburton is often led astray, in his interpretations, by his attention to general positions ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... my watch. Dark have been my forebodings, standing first on one foot and then on the other, through the night hours, preyed upon by visions, holding my eyelids open by my will, while strange thoughts like vultures over their carrion, wheeling about above me, assail me, tear me with their beaks and talons. Dark looms the cloud bank through the black portals of the river. The fog holds the bleared eyes of the morning. And I, stiff with watching, ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman

... "'Kick the carrion aft!' I heard the inhuman brute say to his followers. 'Let the "white trash" see the dog's carcass! He will then believe what I have said, Name of God! and know what is in store ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... commit brutal outrages upon the persons of women and children, deserve naught but death. Let them fight like men; we will slay them in fair fight, but we will give no quarter. We will, if God fights for us, sweep the carrion brood from off the very face ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... they came all in upon me like a flight of birds upon a carrion, seized me, took my sword, and all the money from my pockets, bound me hand and foot with some strong line, and cast me on a tussock of bent. There they sat about their captive in a part of a circle and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... from our men, and their desperate maner of fighting, we began to suspect that we had heard the last newes of our men which the last yere were betrayed of these people. And considering also their rauenous and bloody disposition in eating any kind of raw flesh or carrion howsoeuer stinking, it is to bee thought that they had slaine and deuoured our men: For the dublet which was found in their tents had many holes therein being made ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... Sururab was that the river banks were exceedingly difficult of access. Our camps were getting from bad to worse. That day flocks of huge vultures were to be seen circling overhead as the army advanced. It may have been our approach that disturbed them from their carrion feasts in the devastated villages and the abandoned dervish camps. Omdurman itself must also have long been a choice ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... filthy. I often had to gallop through the last-named holding my handkerchief to my mouth, and the kawwasses running as though they had been pursued by devils. Everywhere in Damascus, but especially in this quarter, the labyrinthine streets are piled with heaps of offal, wild dogs are gorged with carrion, and dead dogs are lying about. One must never judge Damascus, however by externals: every house has a mean aspect in the way of entrance and approach. This is done purposely to deceive the Government, and not to betray what may be ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... the Jinns, for no man had power to build aught like it. In due time, after sore toil, we entered therein and found an endless treasure, ranged in mounds with the utmost ordinance and regularity. Seeing a heap of Ashrafis I pounced upon it as a vulture swoopeth upon her quarry, the carrion, and fell to filling the sacks with golden coin to my heart's content. The bags were big, but I was constrained to stuff them only in proportion to the strength of my beasts. The Darwaysh, too, busied himself in like manner, but he charged his sacks with gems ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... food, fit even for royalty, and were reckoned as thorough French delicacies. There were at that time heronries, as at a later period there were pheasantries. People also ate birds of prey, and only rejected those which fed on carrion. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... intermediate between fish and reptiles, haunt the seas. It is held unwise to exterminate them, since they do their part in keeping down an immense variety of smaller creatures, noxious for one reason or another, and also in clearing the water from carrion and masses of seaweed which might otherwise taint the air of the sea-coasts, especially near the mouths of large tropical rivers. But these sea-monsters devour enormous quantities of fish, and the hunters appointed to deal with them are instructed ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... And seem their savoury words to eat, 110 They praised dead horse, luxurious food, The venison of the prescient brood. The sexton's indignation moved, The mean comparison reproved; The undiscerning palate blamed, Which two-legged carrion thus defamed. Reproachful speech from either side The want of argument supplied: They rail, revile: as often ends The contest of disputing friends. 120 'Hold,' says the fowl; 'since human pride With confutation ne'er complied, Let's state the case, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... 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 warning to ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... sunk once more upon the ground, panting like a fish; and I saw rising in his face the same dusky flush that had mantled on my father's. 'I feel ill,' he gasped, 'horribly ill; the swamp turns around me; the drone of these carrion flies confounds me. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... the first fool you meet 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 that ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... sails flapped idly in the wind. Next morning the 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. He perished himself ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut

... another lady and took her to South America, where she died. This was a dozen years ago or more. He brought down with him to our haunted house a little cask of salt beef; for, he is always convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion, and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with him one "Nat Beaver," an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantman. Mr. Beaver, ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens

... rabble, shouted in derision, deeming it rare sport, forsooth, to see Rome's fiercest gladiator turn pale and tremble at sight of that piece of bleeding clay! And the praetor drew back as if I were pollution, and sternly said, "Let the carrion rot! There are no ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... of trousers." It was probably with a similar leaning towards the more liberal religion that the Lalbegis, though themselves Hindus, adopted a Muhammadan for their tutelary saint. In the Punjab Muhammadan sweepers who have given up eating carrion and refuse to remove night-soil rank higher than the others, and are known as Musalli. [241] And in Saugor the Muhammadans allow the sweepers to come into a mosque and to stand at the back, whereas, of course, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... conveying our two seals up the beach to the place where we had left our dead bird; and there with our knives we proceeded to secure the skins and the blubber, leaving the carcasses behind for the cormorants and carrion crows. ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... at all these useless, cumbersome bits of carrion which no one in the rush of war had had time to remove, one could not but remember how each one had been suddenly wrenched from a useful life and in death had somewhere left a broken family. The dead do not have the tragic expressions ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... over the wrecked buildings until there was nothing left but indescribable chaos. Many, many cattle had died in the crush. There were heaps of dead beasts about the metal girders which were the foundation of the landing-grid. The air was tainted by the smell of carrion. ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster

... are right, Miss Porter," he said, "but I do not think that any of us need worry about our carrion-eating acquaintance. The chances are that he is some half-demented castaway who will forget us more quickly, but no more surely, than we shall forget him. He is only a beast of the ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... wat[gh] e rauen 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, ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various

... punished. His plays are very popular because they touch an audience even to tears, and he has several followers or imitators. The comedies of manners and satirical plays are generally the work of Eusebio Blasco, Ramos Carrion, Echegaray the younger, Estremada, Alverez, though there are others whose names are legion. Echegaray is really a man of genius. A clever engineer and professor of mathematics, he was Minister of Finance during the early days of the Revolution. ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... senator of the very highest rank, family, connections; yet, in the course of a few pages, does Cicero, a man of letters, polished to the extreme standard of Rome, address him by the elegant appellations of 'filth,' 'mud,' 'carrion,' (projectum cadaver.) How could Piso have complained? It would have been said-'Oh, there's an end of republican simplicity, if plain speaking is to be put down.' And then it would have been added invidiously—'Better ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... left for the carrion crow, Or the wolf to batten o'er thee: Or the coward insult the gallant dead, Who in life ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... anniversary of my landing at Sydney, I was worth three hundred thousand pounds, and my commercial name was among the best in the colony. Six months after that, the rot, the infernal rot, had turned my thriving populous pastures into shambles for carrion-mutton, and I had not sixpence of my own in the wide world. A few of the more generous of my creditors left me a hundred pounds with which to make my miserable way to some South American ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... think it worse to put the first glass to a young man's lips, than to crown with madness an old drunkard's life-long alienation—worse to wake the fierce appetite in the depths of a generous and promising nature, than to take the carrion of a man, a mere shell of imbecility, and soak it in a fresh debauch. Therefore, if I were going to say where the License should be granted in order to show its efficacy, I would say—take the worst sinks of intemperance in the city, give them the sanction of the Law, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... with his humours ere the portion be his. His younger brother Oliver is worth a whole pack of such down-looked, smooth-faced hypocrites. Oliver Chadwyck is the boy for a snug quarrel. His fingers itch for a drubbing, and he scents a feud as a crow scents out carrion. The other—mercy on me!—is fit for nought but to be bed-ridden and priest-ridden like his father ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... Solem, as indeed he could hardly avoid doing, since in the "cut" the sun was within a hairsbreath of his beak, while his claws were almost touching a crow (Corvus) perched on a dead horse, to exemplify how Aves Raptores fed on carrion. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... How 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 least enough to buy that two-pronged ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... seems to have attempted to make Columbus exchange the privileges which he enjoyed by the royal promise for a seignory in a little town in the kingdom of Leon, which is named not improperly "The Counts' Carrion." ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale

... a place the abode of serpents, and of carrion, of toads and frogs, solely chosen to avoid expense. Such was the bad taste of the King in all things, and his proud haughty pleasure in forcing nature; which neither the most mighty war, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the religion he was keeping up were the same as those of the poultry-keeper towards the carrion he fed his fowls on. Carrion was very disgusting, but the fowls liked it; therefore it was right to feed the fowls on carrion. Of course all this worship of the images of the Iberian, Kasan and Smolensk Mothers of God was a gross superstition, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... sky and the outlines of the graceful tops of some bulbous stemmed palms but nothing else. Once a vulture sailed across the strip and sighting the two boys came lower to investigate. The sight of the carrion bird made ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... pierced with difficulty by vultures desirous of feeding upon it. His helpless young wife, O Madhava, is continually endeavouring, without success, to drive away those vultures desirous of feeding on carrion. The youthful and brave and handsome Vikarna, O bull among men, brought up in luxury and deserving of every kind of weal, now sleepeth amid the dust, O Madhava! Though all his vital parts have been pierced with clothyard shafts and bearded arrows and Nalikas, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... little to the horses to eat in summer, and nothing at all in the winter, they die fast. You have only to drag the carcass to an outhouse at a little distance from the town, and with your rifle watch during the night. The wolves will come down to prey upon the carrion, and it is hard if you do not kill your couple during the night, and then you are rewarded by the commune. I do not know what the price is now, but when the King of Holland was in possession of Belgium ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... grossest dregs of all elementary mixtures, and have our purer spirits choked by them. The deer scents out a man and powder (though a late invention) at a great distance; a hungry hunter, bread; and the raven, a carrion; their brains, being long clarified by the high and subtle air, will observe a very small change in a trice. Thus a man of the second sight, perceiving the operations of these forecasting invisible people among us (indulged through a stupendous providence to give warnings of some ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... Such a find is a rarity, it attracts attention, very few people make use of the sewers for their affairs, while the river belongs to everybody. The river is the true grave. At the end of a month they fish up your man in the nets at Saint-Cloud. Well, what does one care for that? It's carrion! Who killed that man? Paris. And justice makes no inquiries. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... gradually, as the curious devil mastered me, I grew into such harmony with it that I could shut my eyes no longer to the true purpose of its insistence. It was the closed cell about which my thoughts hovered like crows circling round carrion. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... in me swift horror and enduring caution. The two Dukes had been despatched, sorely against their will, in chase of this man. Was it to their hands that he had yielded up his life and by their doing that he lay like carrion? It might well be that he had sought refuge in this cottage, and having found there death, not comfort, had been flung forth a corpse. I pitied him; although he had been party to a plot which had well nigh caused my own death and taken no account of my honour, yet I was ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... each other's throats in earnest while attacking and defending a sham fortress, raised in the arena for the diversion of those who set us on to the butchery and promise to pay the survivors? Are we to provide a feast of carrion for a flock of vultures and unclean beasts of prey, when we need only stand together, and be true to ourselves and to each other, to accomplish one of the greatest acts in history? The vultures will leave us alone unless we destroy each other; we need not fear them. We are not ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... been, in his own person, guilty of it. To carry a thing under our cloak caressingly, hides from us its identity with something that stands before us on the public pillory. Many a man might read this and assent to it, who cages in his own bosom a carrion-bird that he never knows for what it is, because there are points of difference in its plumage from that of the bird he calls by an ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... those roofs, doubtless, many a wistful look was turned in the direction of lovely France. Much had the poor inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace of England be it said—of England, in general so kind and bountiful. Rations of carrion meat, and bread from which I have seen the very hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment even for the most ruffian enemy, when helpless and a captive; and such, alas! was the fare in those casernes. And then, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... honest men his tenants, that brought him in part; and his son keeps a bad house with knaves that help to consume all. 'Tis but the change of time; why should any man repine at it? Crickets, good, loving, and lucky worms, were wont to feed, sing, and rejoice in the father's chimney, and now carrion crows build in the son's kitchen. I could be sorry for it, but I am too old to weep. Well then, I will go tell him news of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... of the road, sometimes in proof of its agility and self-satisfaction lifting one hind leg and hopping along on three, and then again going on all four and rushing to bark at the crows that sat on the carrion. The dog was merrier and sleeker than it had been in Moscow. All around lay the flesh of different animals—from men to horses—in various stages of decomposition; and as the wolves were kept off by the passing men the dog could eat all ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... It is a burrowing animal, and so rapidly can it dig a hole, that when chased it has often its way made under ground before the hunter can reach it. Its food consists of roots, fruits, and every variety of soft vegetable substances; but it also devours carrion and flesh of all sorts, as well as worms, lizards, ants, and birds which build their nests on the ground. In some parts of the continent the natives cook it in its shell, and esteem it ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... 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 ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst

... 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 ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... die!' Duke Richard said; 'And may each one our foes Bend down their necks to bloody axe, And feed the carrion crows.' ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... the portage, a voyageur got out his fiddle, and the sore feet danced, which was more wholesome than moping or poulticing. The boldness of the grizzlies was now explained. Antelope and buffalo were carried over the falls. The bears prowled below for the carrion. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... may 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, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... 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 pursued their ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... Carrion (fl. 1350), was the author of many poems, the most important of which is "The Dance of Death," a favorite subject of the painters and poets of the Middle Ages, representing a kind of spiritual masquerade, in which persons of every rank and age appear ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... passed on, and the Cid's two fair daughters grew to womanhood and were married, at the command of the king, to the two counts of Carrion. The Cid liked not his sons-in-law, and good reason he had, for they were a pair of base hounds despite their lordly title. The brides were shamefully treated by them, being stripped and beaten nearly to ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... old man, "that he is deceiving you. All the deserters are unanimous in declaring famine and plague are in Orenburg, that they are eating carrion there as a dish of honour. And his lordship assures us there is abundance of all. If you wish to hang Chvabrine, hang on the same gallows this lad, so that they need have naught ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... woman—so far as personal acquaintance with her is concerned—in the background of my history. For one thing, I am not fond of post-mortem examinations; in other words, I do not like searching the decompositions of moral carrion. Analysis of such is, like the use of reagents on dirt, at least unpleasant. Nor was any true end to be furthered by a more vivid presentation of her. Nosology is a science doomed, thank God, to perish! Health alone will at last fill the earth. Or, if there should be always ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... a trout-stream at your door? He'll be a cleverer fellow than I think him if he gets me to eat his salted carrion. Open the door, I say, or you'll have the worst of it when my stick gets near your head. Tell Mrs Belfront her uncle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... these two pieces of carrion at the foot of the Great Staircase, and open wide the Palace doors, that men may note my vengeance at the same time as the insult ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France



Words linked to "Carrion" :   body, dead body, carrion fungus



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