"Herbage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... squatted about or seated on the fronts of two well-loaded wagons, whose teams were tying down contentedly chewing the cud. Four more Boers kept the sheep and oxen in the rear of the wagons from straying away in search of a place to graze, for there was a tempting odour of fresh green herbage saluting their nostrils, along with the pleasant moisture rising from the trickling water hurrying away towards the gully where it found ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... joyous shout of the villager, returning to his cottage-home, nor the rough voice of the carter, grumbling at his lazy horses, was any longer to be heard. The little fellow now perceived that the blue of the flowers in his hand was scarcely distinguishable from the green of the surrounding herbage, and he looked up in some dismay. The night was falling; not, however, a dark winter night, but one of those beautiful, clear, moonlight nights, in which every object is perceptible, though not as distinctly as by day. The ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous
... morning when the sun rose, it lit a novel thing. Seaweed or grass or herbage of some sort was afloat about us. Far as the eye might reach it was like a drowned meadow, vari-colored, awash. All that day we watched it. It came toward us from the west; we ran through it from the east. Now it thinned ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... is an early grass; you may find it in flower in April. An early grass is always valuable to the farmer, who wants herbage for his sheep and cattle after the long winter. The Foxtail, moreover, is a spreading grass. Some of its stems are prostrate; they do not stand upright but creep along the ground. From these prostrate stems fresh roots grow and produce fresh plants. Thus ...
— Wildflowers of the Farm • Arthur Owens Cooke
... bright golden hue, when corydales, violets, and pasque flowers are open, the forests near the Ousuree may bear comparison in variety of richness and coloring with the open woods of the prairie country. Later in the year, the scarcity of flowers is compensated by the richness of the herbage, and after a shower of rain delicious perfumes are wafted towards us from the tops of the walnut ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the enormous horizon ever widens; long shadows fleck the purply-brown and orange-coloured undulations; scattered sparsely are little flocks of sheep, of a rich burnt-umber-brown, but herbage is scant and little cattle can be nourished here. The swelling hills now show new and more grandiose outlines; at last we come in sight of the dark mass of the Causse de Sauveterre, and soon we enter upon the ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... one of a row situated on a terrace, above a muddy declivity marked with footpaths. It looked over a wide expanse of waste ground, covered in places with coarse herbage, but for the most part undulating in bare tracts of slag and cinder. Opposite, some quarter of a mile away, rose a lofty dome-shaped hill, tree-clad from base to summit, and rearing above the bare branches of its topmost trees the ruined keep of Dudley Castle. Along the foot of this hill ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... safety with their heads close to it, which we know that they like to do, but which costs so many of them their lives? Or may not the plugs check the free ingress of the lowest stratum of air, when chilled by radiation at night, from the surrounding ground and herbage? I am inclined to believe in this latter view: firstly, because when worms were kept in pots in a room with a fire, in which case cold air could not enter the burrows, they plugged them up in a slovenly manner; and secondarily, ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... a most exquisite range of tones, which, as they mix together most kindly, render them desirable where purity and delicacy are sought. As to Foliage.—In speaking of Aureolin as adapted for the colouring of foliage and herbage, it is impossible to say too much in its praise. It imparts the vividness and freshness of nature to every colour with which it is combined—a quality of the highest order. As a colour for drapery it has no equal, and may be employed with ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... next station, nearly ninety miles from Yalle. The country around Hambantotte is absolutely frightful-wide extending plains of white sand and low scrubby bushes scattered here and there; salt lakes of great extent, and miserable plains of scanty herbage, surrounded by dense thorny jungles. Notwithstanding this, at some seasons the whole district is alive with game. January and February are the best months for elephants and buffaloes, and August and September are the ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... that I could see the light through his ragged plumes, a hare limping through the bents, further off a crawling flock bustling after shepherd and dog, were all the living things I saw. The ground was iron, the colour of what had once been herbage a glaring brown. Of the flowers none but the hardiest had outlived the visitation of the sun. I saw rest-harrow which has a root like whipcord, and the flat thistle which thrives in dust. The harebells floated no more, the discs of the scabious were shrivelled husks; ladies' bedstraw ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... might have been once a footpath. Following it as well as we could among the branches and brambles, and now ascending steep ground, we soon heard the dash of the waterfall. But to attempt to see it, was no easy undertaking. The trees, the bushes, and the wild herbage grew here thicker than ever, stretching in perfect canopies of leaves so closely across the overhanging banks of the stream, as entirely to hide it from view. We heard the monotonous, eternal splashing of the water, close at our ears, and yet vainly tried to obtain even a glimpse ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... that name, north and south. This may be termed the garden of California; but although several small streams and lakes serve to water it, yet in dry seasons or droughts, not only the crops but the herbage also suffers extremely, and the cattle are deprived of food." The most extensive portion of Upper California—the inland plain between the California and the Colorado range of mountains—is an arid waste, destitute of the requisites for supplying the wants of man. This plain is a waste of sand, ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... Cropping the scant herbage on the flat behind the trapper was a lank, long-limbed horse from which he had just dismounted, and which looked travel-stained and weary like his master. The news the man brought was worthy of consideration, and Ralph listened with rapt attention and with a heart that beat hard and quick, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... half cultivated and half wild, began near the house with cabbages, and ended in a jungle of giant bulrushes as it touched the stream. Golden patches of ragwort blazed here and there among a tangled mass of no doubt worthier herbage,—such even in nature is the power of gold,—and there were ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... River deserts, great sandy plains stretched out before them. Only occasionally were there intervales of grass, and the miserable herbage was saltweed, resembling pennyroyal. The desponding party looked in vain for some relief from the lifeless landscape. All game had apparently shunned the dreary, sun-parched waste, but hunger was now and then appeased by a few fish which they caught ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... well, but sometimes the horses had to go as long as two days without a drink. They were unsaddled and hobbled out, and allowed to roam about all night and pick up scanty bits of food. It amazed the white boys to see what very little herbage of any kind there was for an animal to live on. No grass; just a dry uninviting bush here and there, growing up out of loose barren sand, with, at long intervals, a clump of twisted mulga trees. Yet ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... and rugged way, Through devious, lonely wilds I stray, Thy bounty shall my pains beguile,— The barren wilderness shall smile, With sudden greens and herbage crowned And ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... own way through the tall grass and tangles of flowering shrubs, for there were no trails save those made by the great herds of wild cattle that wandered across the plain. Three thousand head at least I saw grazing on the luxuriant herbage, or pausing with lifted heads before they fled ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... overhead was a cloudless blue, and as they kept not far from shore, the clearly cut outline of the coast, with its rocks and hills standing out in the vivid atmosphere, made a glowing picture, to which the golden green of the spring herbage, bathed in its morning sunlight, lent the magic of enchantment. Who could have been otherwise than happy in such a scene and at such a time? but these were boys with the long bright holiday before them, and happiness is almost too quiet a ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... a view to history,) will furnish us with frequent instances of violent contentions concerning wells; the exclusive property of which appears to have been established in the first digger or occupant, even in places where the ground and herbage remained yet in common. Thus, we find Abraham, who was but a sojourner, asserting his right to a well in the country of Abimelech, and exacting an oath for his security "because he had digged that well." And Isaac, about ninety years ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... sloped off in a declivity covered with a thick forest of oaks. The ravines were thick set on their banks with small timber, or encumbered with burnt wood, and the whole area before them had been stripped bare of all herbage by the buffaloes that had resorted to the Licks. Clumps of soil here and there on the bare rock supported a few trees, which gave the whole of this spot of evil omen a most singular appearance. The advance of the party was headed by McGary, Harland, and McBride. A party of Indians, ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... solitary retreat. It was a narrow glade upon the borders of a little pond dried up by the summer heat, near which he had often gathered plants for Stephane. Among groups of trees which straggled up on all sides, under a patch of blue sky, a ground of blackish clay, cracked and creviced, herbage, dried rushes; here and there some patches of stagnant water, the surface of which was rippled by the gambols of the aquatic spider; further on a large tuft of long-plumed reeds, which shivered at the least breath and rocked upon their trembling stems drowsy red butterflies and ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... with that ever-deluding tropical rapidity, and then you for your sins get into a piece of ground which last year was a native's farm, and, placing one foot under the tough vine of a surviving sweet potato, concealed by rank herbage, you plant your other foot on another portion of the same vine. Your head you then deposit promptly in some prickly ground crop, or against a tree stump, and then, if there is human blood in you, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... he were overthrown; and everyone had thought that the end of the world had indeed come. But the tempest died away; the sun's bright glow dispersed the clouds and mist; sea and sky smiled radiantly blue, and the trees and herbage glistened ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... noble forest, but, although partially cultivated, the soil still continues poor, for it rests upon a foundation of sandstone. Beyond this, the soil becomes better, the trees are less numerous, the herbage more luxuriant, the scenery beautifully varied, the hills are generally more fertile than the valleys, and the farms and cultivated spots are very numerous. In the valleys of the Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers, the richness of the soil is very great, and the plains ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... disappeared within the portal, Singleton cautiously emerged from his hiding-place, and, forcing his way through the sodden herbage, peered round the angle of the rock, watching the movements of the retiring foe. He waited patiently until the rearmost files had penetrated a good hundred yards up the defile, and then he raised ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... which so beautifully bounds the view up the Valais, as seen from Vevey. I was disappointed in finding an object which, in the distance, was so white and shining, much disfigured and tarnished by fragments of broken rock. Still the summit shone, in cold and spotless lustre. There was herbage for a few goats here, and some one had commenced the walls of a rude building that was intended for an inn. No one was at work near it, a hut of stone, for the shelter of the goatherds, being all that looked ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... posturing of sheep and cattle; the soil was thin and poor: bits of grey rock here and there peeped out from the grassy hillocks; bilberry-plants and heather—relics of more savage wildness—grew under the walls; and in many of the enclosures, ragweeds and rushes usurped supremacy over the scanty herbage; but these were ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... them in the carriage. Five minutes elapsed, during which Franz saw the shepherd going along a narrow path that led over the irregular and broken surface of the Campagna; and finally he disappeared in the midst of the tall red herbage, which seemed like the bristling mane of an enormous lion. "Now," said the count, "let us follow him." Franz and the count in their turn then advanced along the same path, which, at the distance of a hundred paces, led them over a declivity to the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... places the steep and almost precipitous sides of the mountains with an intermixture of colours, like the compound hues of a dove's neck. When in the heat of advancing summer, the fresh green tint of the herbage has somewhat faded, it is again revived by the appearance of the fern profusely spread over the same ground: and, upon this plant, more than upon anything else, do the changes which the seasons make in the colouring of the mountains depend. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... massacre, and recapitulated the horrors of that event. A more dreary scene than the present appearance of Mountain Meadows cannot be imagined. The curse of God has fallen upon it and scorched and withered the luxuriant grass and herbage that covered the ground twenty years ago. The Meadows have been transformed from a fertile valley into an arid and barren plain, and the Mormons assert that the ghosts of the murdered emigrants meet nightly at the scene of their slaughter and ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... stage before us to-day, I moved on the party very early, leaving all roads, and steering across the bush to my sheep stations upon the Light. We passed through some very fine country, the verdant and beautiful herbage of which, at this season of the year, formed a carpet of rich and luxuriant vegetation. Having crossed the grassy and well wooded ranges which confine the waters of the Light to the westward, we descended to ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... would be resemblance to what we already know. Hence, having a keen interest in the natural history of my inward self, I pursue this plan I have mentioned of using my observation as a clue or lantern by which I detect small herbage or lurking life; or I take my neighbour in his least becoming tricks or efforts as an opportunity for luminous deduction concerning the figure the human genus makes in the specimen which ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... grass, n. herbage, pasture, pasturage; sward, sod, greensward, lawn, esplanade. Associated Words: agrostology, agrostologist, agrostography, gramineous, graze, palea, graminology, gramineal, swath, rowen, aftermath, turf, tussock, hassock, aftergrass, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the flats, and the unceasing caress of the air, that was like an importunate lover ever unsatisfied, she watched from the height on which she was perched this evening scene of roaming, feeding animals, staring nomads, monotonous herbage and vague, surely-retreating mountains, with quiet, dreamy eyes. Everything which she saw seemed to her beautiful, a little remote and a little fantastic. The slow movement of the camels, the swifter movements of the circling ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... interrupted and truncated—as it were frozen, like the frozen words Pantagruel met at sea. Not only men it was that were quieted, all living creatures that breathe the air became insensible, impassive things. Motionless brutes and birds lay amidst the drooping trees and herbage in the universal twilight, the tiger sprawled beside his fresh-struck victim, who bled to death in a dreamless sleep. The very flies came sailing down the air with wings outspread; the spider hung crumpled in his loaded net; like some gaily painted snowflake the butterfly ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... One thing they all had in common, cartridge belts and guns, in plain view. Taken together they were not a prepossessing lot, playing their game in silence, looking up with a scowl and movements toward gun butts at the visitors. Two burros cropped at the scanty herbage above the tent. A demijohn stood between two of ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... flocks from this tree that they allowed the sheep to wander, the rams to follow the ewes, and to gambol as they pleased. But the efforts of the clerics were vain. There were rams who renounced the ewes, and the succulent herbage that grows about the tree of life, for the sake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge; all the fences that the clerics had erected were broken down one by one; and during the nineteenth century a great feast was held under the tree. But after every feast there are always ailing stomachs; ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... and sheep went forth to crop the green herbage and luxurious grass, heralding their ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... a small transparent pearl. But he was happy, and we skirted the wet meadows overflowed by the swollen river. No more reeds, no more water lilies, no more flowers on the banks. Some cows, up to mid-leg in damp herbage, were grazing quietly. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... darkness. At a little elevation above the cottage, the thin vapor was still rushing towards the east with amazing velocity; while in the west the sun had broken forth and shed his parting radiance on the scene below, aided by the fullest richness of a clear atmosphere and a freshened herbage. Such moments belong only to the climate of America, and are enjoyed in a degree proportioned to the suddenness of the contrast, and the pleasure we experience in escaping from the turbulence of the elements to the quiet of a peaceful ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... to every passing boat and keep staring at the ferry going to and fro. And then on the bank, close to my boat, there are a herd of buffaloes thrusting their massive snouts into the herbage, wrapping their tongues round it to get it into their mouths, and then munching away, blowing hard with great big gasps of contentment, and flicking the flies off ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... withal. We had hardly reached the accustomed spot, when we both saw her at once gliding towards us; punctually as the ancient writers describe the motion of their 'lemures, which swoon along the ground, neither marking the sand nor bending the herbage.' The aspect of the woman was exactly that which had been related by the lad. There was the pale and stony face, the strange and misty hair, the eyes firm and fixed, that gazed, yet not on us, but something that they saw far, far away; one hand and arm ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... high road which lay across the arid plain beneath them like a tape. The country here is barren and stone-ridden, but to the west, where Torrijos gleamed whitely on the plain, the earth was green with lush corn and heavy blades of maize, now springing into ear. Where the two soldiers sat the herbage was scant and of an aromatic scent, as it mostly is in hot countries and in rocky places. That these men belonged to a mounted branch of the service was evident from their equipment, and notably from the great rusty spurs at their heels. They were clad ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... landscape, myriads of vulgar imitations of them have been produced, whose perpetrators have supposed themselves disciples or rivals of Turner, in covering their hills with white dots for forest, and their foregrounds with yellow sparklings for herbage. But the Turnerian redundance is never monotonous. Of the thousands of groups of touches which, with him, are necessary to constitute a single bank of hill, not one but has some special character, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... advanced, and again the Miobu rose to take leave. The moon was sailing down westward and the cool breeze was waving the herbage to and fro, in which numerous mushi were plaintively singing.[12] The messenger, being still somehow unready to ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... hour brought him to rocks, herbage, and palm-trees, and here were empty preserved meat cans and other debris, showing that the force had bivouacked there the night before. And here, too, deep down in a rocky dell, he found a well of clear, bright, sweet, cool water! He flung himself ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... in Great Britain; and as a cultivated plant it has three distinct applications. Its roots roasted and ground are used as a substitute for, adulterant of, or addition to coffee; both roots and leaves are employed as salads; and the plant is grown as a fodder or herbage crop which is greedily consumed by cattle. In Great Britain it is chiefly in its first capacity, in connexion with coffee, that chicory is employed. A large proportion of the chicory root used for this purpose ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... experiment about 25 years ago that herbage under trees sprayed with paris green at the rate of 1 pound to 160 gallons of water was not injurious to animals pasturing upon it. We are not aware that such an experiment has been made with the more recently used ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... Kalama, which is supposed to be the Churmut, 60 days after their departure from the Indus, they at length obtained from the natives some sheep; but the flesh of it, as well as the fowls which they obtained, had a very fishy taste—the sheep, fowls, and inhabitants, all feeding on fish, there being no herbage or trees of any kind, except a few palm-trees. On the next day, having doubled a cape, they anchored in a harbour called Mosarna, where they found a pilot, who undertook to conduct the fleet to the Gulf of Persia. It ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... that winding and narrow gorge. At a place where the rocky defile flared out, making a sort of amphitheatre there were gathered about a spring of water, their horses tethered where they could crop the scanty herbage, the crowd of which our friends had ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... the polished basin. The sparrows, too, were abroad in force, soaking their dust-coloured feathers in the limpid pool and chirping with might and main. Under the sycamores which surrounded the duck-pond opposite the fountain of Marie de Medici, the water-fowl cropped the herbage, or waddled in rows down the bank to embark ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... of golden stores, Of grain, that loads his groaning floors, Of fields with freshening herbage green, Where bounding steeds and herds are seen, I call not happier than the swain, Whose limbs are sound, whose food is plain, Whose joys a blooming wife endears, Whose hours a ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... morning than usual. Far down in the depths of his beclouded soul there was a love of the beautiful, and that love on this morning had been stirred within him. His eyes had been open to see the glittering dewdrops upon the tall wild flowers and green herbage of the plain, to see the giant trees stretch their green arms toward the sky; and his ears had been open to hear a sweet concert upon their topmost branches. Poor buried soul!—how it struggled ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... here. These rats are considered by Mr. Waterhouse as identical with the English kind, but they are smaller, and more brightly coloured. There are no true land-birds, for a snipe and a rail (Rallus Phillippensis), though living entirely in the dry herbage, belong to the order of Waders. Birds of this order are said to occur on several of the small low islands in the Pacific. At Ascension, where there is no land-bird, a rail (Porphyrio simplex) was shot near the summit of the mountain, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... — To the seventh posta at the foot of the Sierra Tapalguen. The country was quite level, with a coarse herbage and a soft peaty soil. The hovel was here remarkably neat, the posts and rafters being made of about a dozen dry thistle-stalks bound together with thongs of hide; and by the support of these Ionic-like columns, the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... bank of shingle at the foot of the cliffs flocks of dark-coated sheep and goats wander in search of such scant herbage as may be found along the water's edge, and many native boats lie along the banks loading the stone extracted by the quarrymen, who look like flies on the face of the rock high above you. Enormous quantities of stone are required for the building of the various ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... interest and attraction of the place exists almost solely in the pyramid and the tragic legends of its vanished people. A few ancient trees ornament the neglected plaza, about which a score of weary burros were seen cropping the scanty herbage which springs up naturally here and there. The spot is said to exhibit some life on market-days, but it was lonely and deserted when we looked upon it, while the dry earth seemed on fire under the intense heat of the sun. It was difficult, ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Council the other day a piece of bread, and placed it on the table before the king 'Sire,' said he, 'there is the bread on which your subjects now feed themselves.'" "In my own canton of Touraine men have been eating herbage more than a year." Misery finds company on all sides. "It is talked about at Versailles more than ever. The king interrogated the bishop of Chartres on the condition of his people; he replied that 'the famine and the morality were such that men ate grass like sheep and died ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... as a strainer to keep out tadpoles, water-beetles, leeches, or any other unpleasant creatures that might be in the water, took two or three steps back and aside, and then, noticing that there was a goodly patch of rich juicy herbage close by the spring, it lowered its head once more, uttered a snort as it blew the grass heavily, to drive off any flies that might be nestling among the strands, and began to crop, crop at the ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... ridge of this beautiful chain of hills, they arrived at an immense Roman encampment, vulgarly called Uffingham Castle, occupying the crown of a hill. A shepherd, who was tending a flock of sheep which were browsing on the delicious herbage to be found within the vast circular space enclosed by the inner vallum of the camp, explained its purpose, and they could not but regard it with interest. He informed them that they were in the neighbourhood ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... farewell to Zandara, set out across the waste northwards towards Einandhu, they follow the desert track for seven days before they come to water where Shubah Onath rises black out of the waste, with a well at its foot and herbage on its summit. On this rock a prophet hath his Temple and is called the Prophet of Journeys, and hath carven in a southern window smiling along the camel track all gods that ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... of Mayenfeld is charmingly situated. From it a footpath leads through green, well-wooded stretches to the foot of the heights which look down imposingly upon the valley. Where the footpath begins to go steeply and abruptly up the Alps, the heath, with its short grass and pungent herbage, at once sends out its soft ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... sympathy with the wild water,—their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of loaded corn, by some stronger gush from the cataract, and bowed again upon the mossy rocks as its roar dies away,—the dew gushing from their thick branches through drooping clusters of emerald herbage, and sparkling in white threads along the dark rocks of the shore, feeding the lichens, which chase and chequer them with purple ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... said, turning their dark sides to the waves to augment the idle roar. The view was sterile; still little patches of earth of the most exquisite verdure, enamelled with the sweetest wild flowers, seemed to promise the goats and a few straggling cows luxurious herbage. How silent and peaceful was the scene! I gazed around with rapture, and felt more of that spontaneous pleasure which gives credibility to our expectation of happiness than I had for a long, long time before. I forgot the horrors ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... now they wend and pass the ditch, and through the mirk night gain The baneful camp: yet ere their death they too shall be the bane Of many: bodies laid in sleep and wine they see strewed o'er The herbage, and the battle-cars upreared along the shore; And mid the reins and wheels thereof are men and weapons blent With wine-jars: so Hyrtacides ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... and the heat and drought were intense. Day after day the sun rose fierce and pitiless, drinking up at a draught what scanty dews had distilled in a night so brief and heated that it brought no refreshment to herbage or to man. Day after day wistful eyes searched the horizon for a cloud if no bigger than a man's hand, and still only the hard blue above and the palpitating horizon line stared blankly back. The crops languished in the field, some already dead, and the scanty store ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... on the hill, had swept it of all its snow. Herbage reappeared on it, interspersed here and there with a few thistles; the hill was covered by that close short grass which grows by the sea, and causes the tops of cliffs to resemble green cloth. Under the gibbet, on ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Dr. Ludwig Wolfe in the middle Congo basin in 1886, were of an average height of four feet three inches. They resemble the Akka in general appearance, and have longish heads, long narrow faces, and small reddish eyes. They bounded through the tall herbage "like grasshoppers" and ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... bed, but went out at once to make his report. He had questioned the boy—a dull boy, but he thought honest. Assuredly he had seen no lady on his way. His lies deceived Maulfry, who would have known better but for her proneness to think everybody a fool. Soon Isoult heard the thud of hoofs on the herbage; then Alice came running in to ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... surrounded by his large household, from Haran to the land of the Canaanites; from thence to that of the Philistines, down into Egypt; wherever so numerous a family and such large flocks could find sustenance—water and herbage. And as he thus sojourned, many of the poor of these lands flocked to him for employment and support; and while he bought the services of the parents, the children born in his house became members of his family, were trained as his servants, and were subject to his authority ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... them to the moistest pastures during the day, and he often watched them at midnight, when flocks, tempted by the sweet dewy grass, are known to browse eagerly, that he might guard them from the fox, and lead them to the choicest herbage. In these nocturnal watchings he sometimes drove his little flock over the water of Corrie, for the fords were hardly ankle- deep; or permitted his sheep to cool themselves in the stream, and taste the grass which grew along the brink. All this time not a drop ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... straggling grass,—all the time up hill, with never a valley to vary the monotonous climbing,—until the bushes began to thicken in about the same manner as they had thinned into the desert, the grass and herbage herded closer together under my feet, and, beating off the ravenous sand, gradually expelled the last trace of it, a few tall trees strayed timidly among the lower shrubbery, growing more and more thickly, till I found myself at the border ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... shot straight above his head, and the curtains of it covered his face. He sat, squatting upon the turf, with a lifted hand admonishing. About him, with cocked ears, and quick side- glances, were some six or seven hares, some reared upon their haunches, some, with sleek heads, intent upon the herbage, one lopping here and there in quest, but none out of range of a quick hand. Above his head, high in the blue, birds were wheeling, now up, now down. Peewits tumbling heavily, pigeons with beating wings, sailing jackdaws—higher yet, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... was for the moment no wind and a serenity that was surely perpetual. The cries of the hill-birds did but drill little holes in the clear hemisphere of silence that lay over this place. The slopes on either side, thickly covered with mats of heather and bristling mountain herbage, and yet lean and rocky, were like the furry sides of emaciated animals, and up above bare black summits confronted the sky. It was the extremity of bleak beauty. And, unafraid of the grimness, Ellen ran on ahead, her arms crooked back funnily ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... as the season advances, myriads of crocuses, tulips, and hyacinths, cover the soil, which perhaps a few days later will be hidden by north-east snowstorms, or drenched by gales from the north-west. No rain falls for two months after the middle of June, the luxuriant herbage withers more rapidly than it grew, and, except in a few spots near the streams, the steppe becomes a black, arid waste. Yet in some parts of these regions the vegetation is extraordinary: 'the wormwoods and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... fretted shell, The wonder of Love made visible, The King a private gentle mood There placed, of pleasant quietude. For right amidst there was a court, Where always musked silences Listened to water and to trees; And herbage of all fragrant sort,— Lavender, lad's-love, rosemary, Basil, tansy, centaury,— Was the grass of that orchard, hid Love's amazements all amid. Jarring the air with rumour cool, Small fountains played into a pool With sound as soft as the barley's hiss When its beard just ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... banqueting halls of Versailles or Windsor. Water-fowl of gorgeous plumage sport in the stream, unintimidated by the approach of man. The plaintive songs of forest-birds float in the evening air. On the opposite side of the stream, herds of deer and buffalo crop the rich herbage of the prairie, which extends far away, till it is lost in the horizon of the south. Daniel retires from the converse of the cabin to an adjoining eminence, where silently and rapturously he gazes upon the scene of loveliness spread ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... folds the child in her arms, the animal snatches at a wayside weed, Joseph, drawing tightly the long rope by which he leads, bends away into the desert with weird energy. In all other representations of this subject the accessory landscape has usually been living with full-foliaged trees, abundant herbage, and copious streams. To indicate the Egyptian phase of its character, palms have been introduced, as in the beautiful picture by Claude in the Doria Gallery, and almost invariably the scene has been one of luxury and peace. But ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... the old man's greeting he showed no inclination to continue in talk, although they still walked side by side, for the elder traveller seemed to desire company. There were no sounds but that of the booming wind upon the stretch of tawny herbage around them, the crackling wheels, the tread of the men, and the footsteps of the two shaggy ponies which drew the van. They were small, hardy animals, of a breed between Galloway and Exmoor, and were known ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... fell around us, while we were sensible of a strong odour of burning, which made it appear as if the enemy was already close at our heels. The grass on every side was too tall and dry to enable us— as is frequently done under such circumstances, by setting fire to the herbage—to clear a space in which we could remain while the conflagration ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... poultry in the most enormous and inconvenient abundance. The cows are pretty miserably off for pasture, the banks and pathways of the dykes being their only grazing ground, which the sheep perambulate also, in earnest search of a nibble of fresh herbage; both the cows and sheep are fed with rice flour in great abundance, and are pretty often carried down for change of air and more sufficient grazing to Hampton, Mr. ——'s estate, on the island of St. Simons, fifteen miles from this place, further down the river—or rather, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... buckets, that are tied to long palmetto ropes made by the men of the neighbouring villages. The water is poured into flat, puddled troughs, and the thirsty flocks and herds drink in turn, before they march away to hunt for such scanty herbage as the land affords. The scene round these wells is wonderfully reminiscent of earliest Bible times, particularly so where the wandering Bedouins bring their flocks to water from the inhospitable territory of the Wad Nun ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... of Ground Gleaners, who does us no harm and not much good, though it is a sort of game bird whose flesh is palatable, and it may be shot in the fall. It is not neighborly and is seldom seen, as it lives only in the thickest reeds or herbage of marshy places, where it can run over the softest mud, or even floating plants, by means of its long spreading toes, which ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... with a black sandy bottom. At day-break the next morning, we found ourselves between two and three leagues from the land, which began to have a better appearance, rising in gentle slopes, and being covered with trees and herbage. We saw a smoke and a few houses, but it appeared to be but thinly inhabited. At seven o'clock we steered S. by E. and afterwards S. by W., the land lying in that direction. At nine, we were abreast of a point which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... jaded Steer, who all day long Had borne the heat and labour of the plough, When Evening came and her sweet cooling hour, Should seek to trespass on a neighbour copse, Where greener herbage waved, or clearer streams Invited him to slake his burning thirst? That Man were crabbed, who should say him Nay: That Man were churlish, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... recover his consciousness until high noon the next day, when he found himself lying in a little hollow between the Mission Hills, and his faithful mule a few paces from him, cropping the sparse herbage. The Padre made the best of his way home, but wisely abstained from narrating the facts mentioned above, until after the discovery of gold, when the whole of this veracious incident was related, with the assertion of the padre that the secret which was thus mysteriously snatched from ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... special form and height of the giraffe (camelopardalis); we know that this animal, the tallest of mammals, inhabits the interior of Africa, and that it lives in localities where the earth, almost always arid and destitute of herbage, obliges it to browse on the foliage of trees, and to make continual efforts to reach it. It has resulted from this habit, maintained for a long period in all the individuals of its race, that its forelegs have become longer than the hinder ones, and that its neck is so ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... used for weapons, while the huntsmen brought their pikes, and spears, and javelins, and such other projectiles as were employed in those days in hunting wild beasts. The troop was divided into companies of one hundred, and for banners they bore tufts of grass on wisps of straw, or fern, or other herbage, tied at the top of a pole. The armament was rude, but the men were resolute and determined, and they made their appearance at the gates of the city upon the outside, just in time to co-operate with Remus in the rebellion which he ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... shroud of shriveled leaves; while here and there meek-eyed sheep lay sunning themselves upon the trampled graves, and the slow- measured sound of a bell dinged now and then as cattle browsed on the scanty herbage in this most neglected of God's Acres. Could Charles Lamb have turned from the pompous epitaphs and high-flown panegyrics of that English cemetery, to the rudely-lettered boards which here briefly told the names and ages of the sleepers in these narrow beds, he had never asked the question ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... shoulder toward the others. Both girls were sleeping soundly, while beyond them, down the slope, the three horses were quietly cropping away at the herbage. ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... these useless places, the grass does not grow in tufts, but covers the land equally, with a short, nutritious herbage, better adapted possibly, to the bite of small, than of large cattle. The food for the latter, is grown in the bottoms of the vallies & upon the damp flats. A large proportion of the soil, promises a fair return, ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... naked ground fails to retard the running off of the waters, which therefore escape rapidly by the rivers, swelling them to momentary torrents that quickly and fruitlessly subside. During the long dry season the exposed herbage dries ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... fed his flock; but some time afterward, taking his station at the mountain called Sinai, he drove his flocks thither to feed them. Now this is the highest of all the mountains thereabout, and the best for pasturage, the herbage being there good; and it had not been before fed upon, because of the opinion men had that God dwelt there, the shepherds not daring to ascend up to it; and here it was that a wonderful prodigy happened to Moses; for a fire fed upon a thorn bush, yet did the green leaves and ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... were dreary, and had none of the wild charms of those of Sweden and Norway to cheat time; neither the terrific rocks, nor smiling herbage grateful to the sight and scented from afar, made us forget their length. Still the country appeared much more populous, and the towns, if not the farmhouses, were superior to those of Norway. I even thought that the ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... was done ringing, and all these busy little bees swarmed into their hive, there was a solitude in the place. The Colonel and his son walked the play-ground together, that gravelly flat, as destitute of herbage as the Arabian desert, but, nevertheless, in the language of the place, called the green. They walked the green, and they paced the cloisters, and Clive showed his father his own name of Thomas Newcome carved upon one of the arches forty years ago. As they talked, the boy gave sidelong ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... outline and unnaturally lofty to the eye. More grandiose and mysterious than under the fierce light of a sunny noontide appeared that day the three giant pillared forms, as we entered the precincts of the ruined city by the Siren's Gate, and made our way through the thick herbage still pearled with dew, since there was neither sunshine nor sirocco to dry "the tears of mournful Eve" off the clumps of silver-glinted acanthus, or the tall grasses bending with the moisture. In the warm humid air ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... spring the shores of the river were strewn with wild flocks of swans, geese, and eider-ducks. The forest resounded with the stir of the beasts. Its woody depths echoed with the noise of bears, elks, wolves, foxes, owls, and woodcocks. The herbage began to sprout and flourish. The nights now drew in, and the days were longer. Dawn and sunset were lilac and lingering. The twilight fell in pale green, shimmering floods of light, and as it deepened and spread the village maidens ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... land-rats and water-rats" in this carnivorous sun-dew family. Aldrovanda, of the warmer parts of Europe and of India, is an aquatic plant, with bladdery leaves, which were supposed to be useful in rendering the herbage buoyant in water. But it has recently been found that the bladder is composed of two lobes, like the trap of its relative Dionaea, or the valves of a mussel-shell; that these open when the plant is in an active ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... nations: but still, he remarked, he had a list of five hundred other volumes to obtain, and after possessing these, he said, he should be satisfied. Alas! he little knew, how soon the whole would appear to him—less than the herbage of the desert! ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... cows, four or five hundred in number, who were crowded together near the bank of a wide stream that was soaking across the sand-beds of the valley. This was a large circular basin, sun-scorched and broken, scantily covered with herbage and encompassed with high barren hills, from an opening in which we could see our allies galloping out upon the plain. The wind blew from that direction. The buffalo were aware of their approach, and had begun to move, though very slowly and in a compact ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... entering the mountains was monotonous in the extreme. It consisted of an elevated tableland composed of ironstone and granite occasionally traversed by veins of whinstone. On this tableland there was little or no herbage; the lower vegetation consisting principally of a short prickly scrub, in some places completely destroyed by the native fires; but the whole country was thickly clothed with mahogany trees, so that in many parts it might be called a dense forest. These mahogany ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... arrived at this spot; and, as the light fell through the irregular gaps on the green herbage, Frederick, turning his head on one side to speak to Louise, noticed the shadow of the leaves ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... a large prickly bush which goes by the name of "wild Irishman," but for miles and miles you see nothing but flat ground or slightly undulating downs of yellow tussocks, the tall native grass. It has the colour and appearance of hay, but serves as shelter for a delicious undergrowth of short sweet herbage, upon which the sheep live, and horses also do very well on it, keeping in good working condition, quite unlike their puffy, fat state ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... pool of rain water, just deep enough to cover his body; into this he walked, and facing about, lay gently down and awaited our on-coming, with nothing but his old grey face and massive horns above the water, and these concealed from our view by rank overhanging herbage. ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... the swealed herbage lifts a leering light, And flames traverse the field; and hurt and slain Opposed, opposers, in a common plight Are scorched ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... no waters to delight Our broad and brookless vales— Only the dewpond on the height Unfed, that never fails, Whereby no tattered herbage tells Which way the season flies— Only our close-bit thyme that smells ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... safe, becomes a mark for all men's weapons. Very small snakes escape our notice, and the whole country does not combine to destroy them; but when one of them exceeds the usual size and grows into a monster, when it poisons fountains with its spittle, scorches herbage with its breath, and spreads ruin wherever it crawls, we shoot at it with military engines. Trifling evils may cheat us and elude our observation, but we gird up our loins to attack great ones. One sick person does not ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... martyrdom in it—it would be but a vulgar murder; but every part is in sympathy with the sentiment. Had Titian merely represented the clear sky of Italy, and brought out prominently green-leaved trees and herbage, because such things are, and were in such a scene where this martyrdom was suffered, the picture would not have been as it is, and must ever be, the admiration of the world and a monument of the genius of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... hurricane. Two cats in one—like a prodigious monster with eight legs and a brace of heads and tails—and through among the lines on which clothes are hanging in the back-green, and which break the fall, the dual number plays squelch on the miry herbage. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... narrow path, (for the whole country was as familiar as a garden to his footstep) that led through the tall wet herbage, almost along the perilous brink of the stream, Aram was now aware, by the increased and deafening sound of the waters, that the appointed spot was nearly gained; and presently the glimmering and imperfect light of the skies, revealed the dim shape of a gigantic rock, that rose ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... itself easily to outline and profile. When I say the bareness I mean the absence of woods and hedges. It blooms with heath and scented shrubs and stunted olive, and the white rock shining through the scattered herbage has a brightness which answers to the brightness of the sky. Of course it needs the sunshine, for all southern countries look a little false under the ground-glass of incipient bad weather. This was the case on the day of my pilgrimage to Les Baux. Nevertheless I was glad ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... viewed from without, in a road-stead protected by a great number of islands, about a musket-shot asunder, and he called this place Mar de Nuestra Sennora, or Our Lady's Sea. The channels between the islands were deep, and the shores beautifully adorned with trees and green herbage. Some of the trees resembled mastic, and others lignum aloes, some like palms with smooth green stems, and many other kinds. Landing on these islands, they found no inhabitants, but there were the appearances of many fires having been made in them, by fishers; as the inhabitants ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... way came pitching and plunging in from sea, and one or two venturesome craft, heeling far to leeward, tore through the billows and tossed far astern a frothing wake. With manes and tails streaming in the stiff gale, the troop horses of the Fourth Cavalry were cropping at the scanty herbage down the northward slope, and the herd guard nearest the road lost his grip on his drab campaign hat as he essayed a salute, and galloped off on a stern chase down the long ravine to the east, as the colonel trotted briskly by. One keen glance over the bay beyond rocky Alcatraz had told him the ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... of the Gill) was quite amazed as she chanced round a niche of the bank upon this image. An image fallen from the sun, she thought it, or at any rate from some part of heaven, until she saw the pony, who was testing the geology of the district by the flavor of its herbage. Then Insie knew that here was a mortal boy, not dead, but sadly wounded; and she drew her short striped kirtle down, because her shapely ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the island of Madeira, it exhibits to the eye a strikingly beautiful and picturesque view. The uneven surface of the hills, covered with plantations of vines, and various kinds of herbage, with the exception of partial spots burnt up by the heat of the sun in the dry season, displays a singular perspective, which, with the beautiful appearance of the interspersed villas, churches, and monasteries, form an arrangement both ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... of, turned up Glendhu, and kept searching for some time in vain, until at length she found two or three bunches of the herb growing in a little lonely nook that lay behind a projecting ledge of rock, where one would seldom think of looking for herbage at all. Here she found a little, soft, green spot, covered over with dandelion; and immediately she began to dig it up. The softness of the earth and its looseness surprised her a good deal; and moved by an unaccountable curiosity, she pushed ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... form a large part of the actual herbage from which the hay is made. The bottom of a good crop of mowing grass springs from a tangle of clover and leguminous plants, all owning blossoms, and many of them of brilliant hues and exquisite perfume. Chief among these is the red meadow-clover, the pride ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... periodical necessity. An orphanage in India for similar reasons does not seem to be as rationally economic as one for the Labrador children. I never see a cliff face from which an avalanche has removed the supersoil and herbage without thinking in pity of the crowded sections of China, where tearing up even the roots of trees for fuel has permitted so much arable land to be denuded by rains that the food supply gets smaller while the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... several calabashes and gourds full of water, and collected a quantity of boiled corn. As soon as this was done, we set off again, and entered the desert. We were astonished and terrified when we looked around us, not a single vestige of herbage, not a blade of grass was to be seen—all was one wide waste of barren sand, so light as to rise in clouds at the least wind, and we sank so deep in walking through it that at last we could hardly drag one foot after the other. But we ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... Vicar shall also receive and have all mortuaries whatsoever, live and dead, of whatsoever things they may consist. The said Vicar shall also receive and have all profit and advantage arising from the herbage of the churchyard. He shall also have and receive the tithes of all fish-ponds whatsoever, within the said parish, wheresoever made, or that hereafter shall be made. The said Vicar shall also have for his habitation the space on the south side of the churchyard, measuring in length, from the ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... uplift them, or we are neglecting them, and allowing them to browse where they will upon the rank weeds of petty spites, petty jealousies, petty gossipings and petty deeds. In action we may have no time to waste over this poisonous herbage; but in dulness most certainly we do have the temptation—and as we resist or succumb so shall we conduct ourselves when the larger events of life ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... length was not less than sixty feet, and larger ones may have existed. It stood high on its legs; the hind ones were larger than the fore. The feet were massive and armed with tremendous claws. It lived on the land and fed on herbage. It had a horny, spiky ridge all along its back. Its tail was nearly as long as its body. Its head was short, its jaws enormous, furnished with teeth of a very elaborate structure, and on its muzzle it carried a curved horn. Such a beast as this might well have caused all that ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... among the dark green of their leaves, and mingling with the scarlet flowers of the pomegranate and the paler ones of the arbutus, that ran mantling to the crags above; while, lower still, spread the pastures of Piedmont, where early flocks were cropping the luxuriant herbage of spring. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... by; in the heaving of that tune there was an earnestness which made him thoughtful, and the shine of those windows he had characterized as ugly reminded him of the shining of the good deed in a naughty world. The chapel and its shabby plot of ground, from which the herbage was all trodden away by busy feet, had a living human interest that the numerous minsters and churches knee-deep in fresh green grass, visited by him during the foregoing week, had often lacked. Moreover, there was going ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... he had recovered a city destitute of inhabitants, some of them dead in civil wars and insurrections, and others being fled to escape tyrants, so that through solitude and want of people the great marketplace of Syracuse was overgrown with such quantity of rank herbage that it became a pasture for their horses, the grooms lying along in the grass as they fed by them; while also other towns, very few excepted, were become full of stags and wild boars, so that those who had nothing else to do went frequently a hunting, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... which we found in the course of the excursion, seemed readily to account for this: indeed during dry seasons it not unfrequently happens, that an immense tract of land is desolated with fire, communicated, either by the design or carelessness of the natives, to the dry herbage on the surface. The moment the flame has been kindled it only waits for the first breath of air to spread it far and wide: then on the wings of the wind, the fiery tempest streams over the hillsides and through the vast plains and prairies: bushwood and ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... and there occurs a sightly clump of waxen yellow blossoms, where these vegetable hedgehogs are in their holiday attire,—but it must be confessed that the view is a melancholy change from our recent affluence of beauty. With the other succulent plants, the rich herbage of the prairie has entirely disappeared. There is not a blade of anything which an Eastern grazier would recognize as grass between this boundary and the Rocky Mountains. As we whiz over these wastes at railroad-speed, we shall be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the very depths of the earth. The sides of the hollow sloped towards the centre, and were covered with bushes. Noting this, our romantic friend resolved to explore the spot. He descended cautiously till he came to a place where the hole had narrowed to about twenty feet in diameter, and the herbage ceased because of the absence of the earth to sustain it. Filled with eager curiosity, the reckless man held on to a branch and stretched his head over the edge of the hole. He saw nothing but blackness. He soon felt something, however, for the branch suddenly broke off, and John went ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... organism of an antediluvian time—partaking of the cephalopod in shape—lying lifeless, and covered with a thin green cloth, which hides its substance, while revealing its contour. This dull green mantle of herbage stretches down towards the levels, where the ploughs have essayed for centuries to creep up near and yet nearer to the base of the castle, but have always stopped short before reaching it. The furrows of these environing attempts ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy |
