"Insect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in expounding the political history of the intervening two centuries, drew an apt image from a seed eaten by insect parasites. First there is the original seed, ripening vigorously enough. And then comes some insect and lays an egg under the skin, and behold! in a little while the seed is a hollow shape with an active grub inside that has eaten out its substance. And then comes some secondary ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... which, hanging at the end of a long thread of its own spinning, was endeavoring, as is the fashion of that creature, to swing itself from one beam in the roof to another, for the purpose of fixing the line on which it meant to stretch its web. The insect made the attempt again and again without success; at length Bruce counted that it had tried to carry its point six times, and been as often unable to do so. It came into his-head that he had himself fought just ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Mrs. Marston did it. No one ever saw her hurried or busy, yet the proofs of her industry were here. She worked like the coral insect, in the dark, as it were, of instinct unlit by intellect, and, like the coral insect, she raised a monumental structure ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... agricultural operations and could not be placated until a shrine was built in its honour; that in the time of the Emperor Kogyoku, the people of the eastern provinces devoted themselves to the worship of an insect resembling a silkworm, which they regarded as a manifestation of the Kami of the Moon; that the Emperor Keiko (A.D. 71-130) declared a huge tree to be sacred; that in the days of the Empress Suiko (A.D. 593-628), ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... He appeared on a stretched cable, far away above the sea of tossing hats and handkerchiefs, and in the glare of the hundreds of rockets that whizzed heavenward by him he looked like a wee insect. He balanced his pole and walked the length of his rope—two or three hundred feet; he came back and got a man and carried him across; he returned to the center and danced a jig; next he performed some gymnastic and balancing feats too perilous to afford a pleasant spectacle; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Armadillo. Fire-flies. Singular Fandango. Epiphytes. The Junta. Indian Life. Decorative Art. Horses. Jalapa. Anglo-Mexicans. Insect-life. Monte. Fate of Antonio. Scorpion. White Negress. Cattle. Artificial lighting. Vera Cruz. Further Journey. St. Thomas's. Voyage to England. Future destinies ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... rudimentary state; the pistil is curved towards the perfect nectary, and the hood, formed of the inner petals, slips off the pistil and stamens in one direction alone, so that, when a bee sucks the perfect nectary, the stigma and stamens are exposed and rubbed against the insect's body. In several closely allied genera, as in Dielytra, &c., there are two perfect nectaries, the pistil is straight, and the hood slips off on either side, according as the bee sucks either nectary. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... commerce is the fibre spun by the larvae or caterpillars of a moth, Bombyx mori, as they enter the chrysalis stage of existence. The silk-growing industry includes the care and feeding of the insect in all its stages. The leaves of the white mulberry-tree (morus alba) are the natural food of the insect, and silk-growing cannot be carried on in regions where this tree does not thrive. Not all areas that produce the ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... belonged to the Mantis family; that instead of being a praying insect, it is one of the most combative and savage in existence. "It lives upon beetles and flies of every description," he added. "When two of the creatures of the same species meet together, they engage in a fierce combat, cutting at each other with their fore legs with such force as ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... Insect lover of the sun, Joy of thy dominion! Sailor of the atmosphere; Swimmer through the waves of air; Voyager of light and noon; Epicurean of June; Wait, I prithee, till I come Within earshot of thy ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the early weeks spent at close quarters with her bore out these fears. The looks both M. P. and her friend bent on Laura said as plainly as words: if we are forced to tolerate this obnoxious little insect about us, we can at least show it just what a horrid little beast it is.—M. P. in particular was adamant, unrelenting; Laura quailed at ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... now," says I, "is a really classical insect, and breathes of Virgil and the Augustan age,—and then she is a domestic, tranquil, placid creature. How beautiful the murmuring of a hive near our honeysuckle of a calm, summer evening! Then they are tranquilly and peacefully amassing for us their stores of sweetness, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and was wiping his face on the towel when Celeste appeared in the doorway. She eyed him, her head inclined roguishly to one side, the exact attitude of a bird that has suddenly met a curious and disturbing specimen of insect life. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... reduced to a powder, and mixed up with water dropped from the shell of the butternut, through the ochre of war. The wise master of the spell had drawn from field, and forest, earth, air, and water, from beast and bird, and fish and reptile, and insect and tree, and flower and fruit, all the various properties which have an agency in subduing things to the will of him, to whom those properties have been taught. From these he had compounded a medicine, the mighty power of which ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... vanishing point; thinness &c 203. dwarf, pygmy, pigmy^, Liliputian, chit, pigwidgeon^, urchin, elf; atomy^, dandiprat^; doll, puppet; Tom Thumb, Hop-o'-my-thumb^; manikin, mannikin; homunculus, dapperling^, cock-sparrow. animalcule, monad, mite, insect, emmet^, fly, midge, gnat, shrimp, minnow, worm, maggot, entozoon^; bacteria; infusoria^; microzoa [Micro.]; phytozoaria^; microbe; grub; tit, tomtit, runt, mouse, small fry; millet seed, mustard seed; barleycorn; pebble, grain of sand; molehill, button, bubble. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... from between the branches with a silken net in pursuit of a butterfly. The beautiful apparition, with loose and streaming hair, seemed rather to fly than run, as her light and rapid steps, full of eagerness and animation, scarcely touched the earth while darting after the gaudy insect. How graceful she is, as, halting for an instant beneath the coquettish moth, she looks up to behold its gold-and-purple wings dancing round her head, mocking and playing with its gay pursuer! She thinks she ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... in the east, the bird, beast, and insect worlds began to stir. And a wonderful stir do these worlds make at that hour in the grand regions of Central South America; for although nocturnal birds and beasts retire and, at least partially, hide their diminished heads at daylight, the myriad denizens ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... was eating her life-blood away. To her, alone, in all that party, the warm arms of the sun brandished javelins, and the calm riches of the landscape concealed jibes. The meanest field labourer seemed happier than she, the commonest insect more wanton and ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... on Mars, the conditions being very favourable to insect life; and they are all on a very much larger scale than our insects, ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... offered him the needle, and as he pierced the insect before fixing it on the cork, Sir Thomas, until then impassive, got up, and, drawing near a bandbox, he began to examine the spider crab of Guiana with a feeling of horror which was strikingly portrayed on his ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... one, from the catalogue of the flying leaves and small cheap journals, political and satirical, that sprung into existence after the revolution, mostly in Berlin and Vienna; not more than three or four of them now exist. The insect world was a favorite source of names for the satirist, the sting of whose production was frequently only in the title: every week produced the Hornet, the Wasp, the Gadfly, and their plurals, the Wasps and the Gadflies; there was also an Imperial Gadfly, and one Wasp's ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... easily as it explains an insect alighting on colored paper. But perhaps if people didn't like clear, bright, healthy eyes—which is biologically understandable—they couldn't like precious stones. One thing may be a necessary collateral of the others. And, after all, a fine clear sky of bright colors ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... every medicinal device that is placed upon the market. They are the class from whom the patent medicine vendor draws his enormous annual profits. Like a bee in a garden of roses, they flit from one remedy to another, but, unlike that energetic and acquisitive insect, they do not gather the golden reward they are in search of—health. It is the purveyor of the nostrum that secures whatever there is ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... motive than fear of present punishment, his goodness cannot be very great. A good man, Charles, always takes delight in conferring happiness on all around him; nor would he offer the smallest injury to the meanest insect that was capable of feeling. 'I am sure,' said the boy, 'I have often seen you kill wasps, and spiders too; and it was but last week that you bought a mouse-trap yourself to catch mice in, although you are so angry now with me.' 'And pray,' ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... might find some crickets under those logs," said Betty. She laughed merrily at the awkward spectacle made by Alfred crawling over the ground, improvising a sort of trap out of his hat, and pouncing down on a poor little insect. ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... his oaken walls, and called from morning to night. Hard-working parents rushed hither and thither, snatching, digging, or dragging their prey from every imaginable hiding-place. It was woful times in the insect world, so many new hungry mouths to be filled. All this life seemed to stir the young kings: they grew restless; they were late. Their three little heads, growing darker every day, bobbed this way and that; they changed places in the nest; they thrust out small wings; above all and through all, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... forcible arguments, the most pathetic eloquence from the pulpit, will not affect so powerfully the mind of man, as the investigation of a blade of grass, or the mechanism of the almost imperceptible insect. If, then, such is the effect upon mankind in general, how strong must be the impressions of those who occupy their business in the great waters! These men "see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep." They behold him in all his magnificence, in all his beauty, in all his wrath, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... is true, in the height of his power; but, at his uprising, the air is filled with harmonious sounds, the insect tribes are on the wing, and unite their feeble voice in the universal ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... but he knew they still stood close beside him. The voice went on peremptorily. "Stand still if you don't want to be pinned against the wall like an insect." ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... Look you, he has attempted to paint a fly upon that rose-bud! Why, it is no more like a fly than I am like an ——' But as the connoisseur approached his finger to the picture, the fly flew away. It happened to be the real insect!' Is not the following a forcible picture of a mercurial, hero-loving Frenchman? 'Has he property? An edict from the Grand Monarque can take it, and he is satisfied. Pursue him to the Bastile, or the dismal dungeon in the country to which a lettre-de-cachet conveys ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... the result of the scientific investigations carried on by its officers in "Annual Reports" of the Secretary and Chiefs of Divisions; in a series of "Circulars" on special subjects, in regular "Bulletins;" and in a series of studies on "Insect Life." ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... special preponderance of self-fertilized or wind-fertilized plants, but everywhere the demand for and evidence of insect life. Now where there are seeds and insects there will be birds and small mammals and where these are, will come the slinking, sharp-toothed kind that prey on them. Go as far as you dare in the heart of a lonely land, ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... the religion of the Bushmen is thus disposed of. 'Pray to an insect of the caterpillar kind for success in the chase.' That is rather meagre. They make arrow-poison out of caterpillars,[2] though Dr. Bleek, perhaps correctly, identifies Cagn with ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... diseases and insect pests increased, winds broke down many of the unpruned trees, frosts often blighted the entire crop of fruit, and the uncultivated, sod-choked trees produced fruit that was less in quantity and poorer in ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... their religious altars to offer their gratitude and praise to Him from whom cometh all these blessings; for in His hand are the resources of national wealth. With him are the ministers of good and the ministers of evil. He can marshal the insect. He can excite the malaria. He can call forth the tornado. He can put down his foot and wreck the earth with earthquake throes. The ministers of evil are with Him, and stand with closed eyes and folded wings around His throne, but ...
— 'America for Americans!' - The Typical American, Thanksgiving Sermon • John Philip Newman
... busily engaged on their hands and knees searching all over the ground for the identical ivy leaf where Babs had placed the rescued insect, when a voice sounded in their ears, and Judy raised her head to see pretty Mildred Anstruther ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... is open all the night through, and the lamps burning before the gilded Buddha bring us the company of the insect inhabitants of every garden in the neighborhood. Moths, mosquitoes, cicalas, and other extraordinary insects of which I don't even know the names—all this company ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Funyes, an insect like a maggot, whose eggs had been inserted on my having been put into an old house infested by them; as they enlarge they stir about and impart a stinging sensation; if disturbed, the head is drawn in a little. When a poultice is put on ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... All diligence of spirit.] "With the whole bent of my mind." A happy phraseology; in ridicule, at the same time that it was in conformity with the style of the airy, affected insect that was ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... inflammation there will often be found a prick or tear by which the septic matter has entered, and in such case the inflammation will for a time be concentrated at that point. A round or conical swelling around an insect bite is especially characteristic. A snake bite is marked by the double prick made by the two teeth and by the violent and rapidly spreading inflammation. Erysipelas is attended with much swelling, extending beyond the lids and causing the mucous membrane ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... friend that a question of so great magnitude to him had been decided by the last sting which he had received from an insect so contemptible as Mr. Bonteen, but he expressed the feeling as well as he knew how to express it. "Oh, I shall be with you. I know what you are going to say, and I know how good you are. But I could not stand it. Men are beginning already ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... every branch of floriculture, the price of success is constant vigilance. If you do not get the start of insect enemies, and keep them under control, they will almost invariably ruin your crop of flowers, and often the bushes themselves. Therefore be thorough and persistent in the warfare waged against the common enemy, and do not relax your efforts until he ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... 6). This is His own complaint. No longer a man but writhing on the ground like a worm, the substitute of sinners, thus the Holy One felt when He was numbered among the transgressors. The Hebrew word "worm", means the small insect, the coccus, from which the scarlet color is obtained by death of this worm, that color which was used in connection with the tabernacle. Thus He died as our substitute that our sins though they are as scarlet might be white as snow. Men reproached Him; His own ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... little noises of the earth Come with softest rustle; The shy, sweet feet of life; The silky mutter of moth-wings Against my restraining palm; The strident beat of insect-wings, The silvery trickle of water; Little breezes busy in the summer grass; The music of crisp, whisking, scurrying leaves, The swirling, wind-swept, frost-tinted leaves; The crystal splash of summer rain, Saturate with ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... unusual series of bird and insect stories for boys and girls from three to eight years ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Fairbridge. Fairbridge, to its own understanding, was a nucleus, an ultimatum. It was an example of the triumph of the infinitesimal. It saw itself through a microscope and loomed up gigantic. Fairbridge was like an insect, born with the conviction that it was an elephant. There was at once something ludicrous, and magnificent, and terrible about it. It had the impressiveness of the abnormal and prehistoric. In one sense, it was prehistoric. It was as a giant ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and bundle, I followed a faint path that wound its way to the house through wet blackberry vines whose thorns had outlived the winter. My steps broke the blank silence that brooded over the place. At this season there was no insect life; nor any other stirring thing within hearing or sight. But just as I stepped upon the veranda, I heard a vague sound from the lake that lay a few hundred feet to the north. There was no wind, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the midst of my cares and tribulations. A slight drizzling rain began to fall. The stillness of a prairie is a damper to the best of spirits—the entire suspension of all noises and sounds, not even the tick of an insect to break the black, dull, dark monotony, is a wet blanket to cheerfulness. I really think the stillness of a large prairie is one of the most painful sensations of loneliness, a man ever encountered. The sombre and dreary ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... most cruelly; every faculty of his being was strained and concentrated in the one sense of hearing; sounds so faint as to be imperceptible reverberated in his ears like the crash of thunder; the plash of a distant waterfall, the rustling of a leaf, the movement of an insect in the grass, were like the booming of artillery. Was that the tramp of cavalry, the deep rumbling of gun-carriages driven at speed, that he heard down there to the right? And there on his left, what was that? was it not the sound of stealthy whispers, stifled voices, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... and full of home truth; the Sailor's Wife is a pensive ballad-tale of the sea, by M. Howitt, and likely to linger on the mind of childhood; the First Weavers, by the Rev. C. Williams, is as ingenious in its way as Professor Rennie's Bird or Insect Architecture: it enumerates many interesting processes of weaving by insects and birds, who, unlike human artificers, pursue their tasks in the untainted atmosphere of nature;—there are also two or three pretty playful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... their own particular insect enemies which attack them and no others. Some of these insects live upon the leaves, others eat the sapwood under the bark, while a few attack the roots. Certain insects burrow in and eat the heartwood. Although this does not always kill the tree, ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... noises produced by winged insects are not, as might be supposed, vocal sounds. They result from sonorous undulations imparted to the air by the flapping of their wings. This may be rendered evident by observing, that the noise always ceases when the insect alights on any object. The sirene has been ingeniously applied for the purpose of ascertaining the rate at which the wings of such creatures flap. The instrument being brought into unison with the sound ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... better comparison, General," said he. "I owe my idea to those very naturalists you speak about so slightingly. By dint of studying those little creatures—as you say—under a microscope, these patient, gifted men discover the habits and instincts of the insect world. Very well, then. What they can do with an insect, I ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... and importance to the ranger is the study of insect infestation. Many trees are killed annually by certain insects, and these must be ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... books in natural history that we have ever seen is "Episodes of Insect Life," recently published in England, and now in the press of Mr. Redfield, in this city. It is divided into three "scenes," representing spring, summer, and autumn, and is profusely and skilfully illustrated. It is even more entertaining ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... flowers. Among the lower animals, he enumerates horned horses furnished with wings; the mantichora, with the face of a man, three rows of teeth, a lion's body, and a scorpion's tail; the basilisk, whose very glance is fatal; and an insect which cannot live except in the midst of the flames. But notwithstanding his credulity and his want of judgment, this elaborate work contains many valuable truths and much entertaining information. The prevailing character of his philosophical belief, though tinctured with the stoicism of the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... his doom, gave way to one of those fearful bursts of rage which no experience had succeeded in teaching him to curb. He howled till the dirt sticking about the vaulted ceiling, and the earth choking up the air-hole, dropped piecemeal to the ground, and every insect that had ears covered them up the best way it could to prevent its becoming instantaneously deafened by the horrid sound; then tearing round and round and round the confined space of his cell, till there seemed ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... of her sense of the ridiculous, "they 'dealt' in us! More than likely they played poker to decide how to divide us up—to see who should love you and which should love me! As if the heart of a woman can be made to run in a groove cut to order by the hand of any masculine—insect!" she finished, thoughtless ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... the same allowance of nerve and sinew to men of every size, and that nature spun the stock out thinner or stronger, according to the extent of surface which they were to cover. Hence, the least creatures are oftentimes the strongest. Place a beetle under a tall candlestick, and the insect will move it by its efforts to get out; which is, in point of comparative strength, as if one of us should shake his Majesty's prison of Newgate by similar struggles. Cats also, and weasels, are creatures of greater exertion or endurance than dogs or sheep. And in general, you may remark, that ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... described in the Laws of Menu, ii. 191 to 218, 242, 8. "By censuring his preceptor, though justly, he will be born an ass; by falsely defaming him, a dog; by using his goods without leave, a small worm; by envying his merit, a larger insect or reptile." As the Roman law did not contemplate the possibility of parricide, that of Menu has no provision against the crime ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... not know what manner of God is mine. The Mullah cries aloud to Him: and why? Is your Lord deaf? The subtle anklets that ring on the feet of an insect when it moves are heard of Him. Tell your beads, paint your forehead with the mark of your God, and wear matted locks long and showy: but a deadly weapon is in your heart, and how ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... ceaselessly occupied. We have seen that, long before a sentence was written, he had invented and studied, in its remotest branches, the life-history of the characters who were to move in his play. Nothing was unknown to him of their experience, and for nearly two years, like a coral-insect, he was building up the scheme of them in silence. Odd little objects, fetiches which represented people to him, stood arranged on his writing table, and were never to be touched. He gazed at them until, as if by some feat of ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... of inquiry, the only insect answering your specifications is a small spider Lathrodectus mactans, sometimes popularly called the Red Dot, from a bright red mark upon the back. Rare cases are known where death has been caused by the bite of this ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... am hospitable enough in my feelings to him and all his tribe. These specialists are the coral-insects that build up a reef. By and by it will be an island, and for aught we know may grow into a continent. But I don't want to be a coral-insect myself. I had rather be a voyager that visits all the reefs and islands the creatures build, and sails over the seas where they have as yet built up nothing. I am a little afraid that science is breeding us down too fast into coral-insects. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... course, buds come out from healthy wood below. No treatment has been devised against it, though its breeding ground is limited if all dead wood and brush and litter is cleaned up and twigs are cut off below the point of injury whenever the work of the insect is seen. ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... their disappearance was as sudden as in the former case of 1821. Under the wing upon the body of each grasshopper was to be found one or more scarlet red parasites which drew all the juices from the body of the insect and produced death. For a third of a century they have been almost unknown, and the area of cultivated ground in the States of North and South Dakota, where they may supply their hunger renders it likely that Manitoba will know them no more. It cannot ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... sound broke the deep and awful silence. No bird sang, no insect droned; there was no scurry of woodland creatures among the leaves, no sigh of wind in the trees. In all that place only the thorn hedge seemed threateningly alive, waiting to destroy the intruder who should attempt to force the secret ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... sharp, whirring sound, there flew into the room a big insect, two inches long ... it flew in, circled round, and settled on ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... resemblance of this fine poem to Cowley's Ode bearing the same name, and beginning "Happy insect! what can be," will ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... insect which gathers honey, or it represents the verb "to be" which means to exist. Again, it may be the first part of a verb like "be-come" or "be-have." In this particular instance it is followed by {illust.} which ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... first they come With snaky whispers at your ear; And when like swarming bees they hum You know the tinkling chill of fear. A whining thing will pluck your heel, A whirring insect sting your shin; You shrink to half your size, and feel The ripples o'er your body seal- 'Tis ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... if such it can be called, used in pike-fishing. This fly resembles a natural insect as much as a tea-pot resembles an elephant, but it does attract pike—in the same way, we suppose, that a piece of red flannel will attract a mackerel. If our readers wish to try it, they can buy it at almost any ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... One of the ancient names of Japan, given to the country on account of a supposed resemblance in shape to that insect. The dragon-flies of Japan ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... proceeding had lost her the walk. They were all gone. The house was very still, early summer sweetness was drifting through wide-opened windows and doors; the long day was slowly declining. In the woods close to the door a really summery hum of insect life was stirring. Hong, in dull minor gutturals, jabbered somewhere in the far distance to a friend. Anne peeped into the deserted living room, softened through all its pleasant shabbiness into real ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... the squadrons and in full career Colonel de Warrenne's charger put his near fore into ground honey-combed by insect, reptile, or burrowing beast, crashed on its head, rolled like a shot rabbit, and Colonel Matthew Devon de Warrenne lay dead—killed by his ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... don't respect him. Who could? He is bursting with money, but won't give Doria a farthing, won't hear of our marriage, and practically forbids me the house. What possible feeling can one have for an old insect like that?" ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... among us; and elective affinity is but a dainty carving on the chancel stalls. The loveliness which makes that special person the veritable Rose of the World to us exists but in our imagination. It is no rose that we adore—only at the best a bedeguar, of which the origin is a disagreeable little insect. We believe in the exquisite harmony of those atoms which have arranged themselves to form the thing we love. And we marry our human ideal, expecting the unbroken continuance of that harmony. But the ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... Lincoln. He passed a beetle one day that was sprawling upon its back. It was kicking hard in its efforts to turn over. Lincoln stooped and set it right. "Do you know," he said to the friend beside him, "I shouldn't have felt just right if I'd left that insect struggling there. I wanted to put him on his feet and give him a chance with all the ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... winged insect over the strip of corduroy road, and a minute later the pungent odour of the ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... is nothing but a testicle living on the female.[21] A yet more striking instance is furnished by the curious green worm Bonellia, where the male appears like a remote ancestor of the female, on whom it lives parasitically. Somewhat similar is the cocus insect, among whom the males are very degenerate, small, ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... Eagle with his eye and pinion, trained For mateship with the sun, twitched at a sting. Amazed to find a "cootie" on his wing, And that the insect dreamed, it was ordained By race heredity to serve the King— He shook his plume ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... traversing the Montana never feels himself alone. Legions of beings accompany him. All of the nature to whom he owes his soul speaks to him through the noise of the wind, in the roaring of the waterfall. The insect like the bird—everything, even to the bending twig wet with dew—for him has language, distinct personality. The forest is alive in its depths, has caprices, periods of anger; it avoids the thicket ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... with cheerful note, in crowded flocks, sweeps over the face of the country, and in its progress clears away multitudes of small insect pests." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Legrand, who seemed to be getting unaccountably warm upon the subject; "I am sure you must see the antenn. I made them as distinct as they are in the original insect, and I presume that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... last kick, and we shall not disturb his dying moments." Two years later the magazine seemed to think he had some power of kicking left, for it returned to the charge in consequence of his review of Lockhart's "Life of Scott." In this article he was called a "spiteful miscreant," an "insect," a "grub," a "reptile." The "Quarterly Review" was as virulent and violent as the magazines, but the attack was more skillful as well as longer and more elaborate. By garbling extracts it cleverly insinuated a good deal more than it said, and it so contrived to put several ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... wanes, and autumn approaches. The songsters of the seed-time are silent at the reaping of the harvest. Other minstrels take up the strain. It is the heyday of insect life. The day is canopied with musical sound. All the songs of the spring and summer appear to be floating, softened and refined, in the upper air. The birds, in a new but less holiday suit, turn their faces southward. The swallows flock and go; the bobolinks ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... is making you look like a bale of hay that has been dumped by mistake on an athletic field. And when he gets a team in the gymnasium between halves, with the game going wrong, and stands up before them and sizes up their insect nerve and rubber backbone and hereditary awkwardness and incredible talent in doing the wrong thing, to say nothing of describing each individual blunder in that queer nasal clack of his—well, I'd rather be tied up in a great big frying-pan over a good hot stove ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... expend on their nearest and dearest Lord Marshmoreton lavished on seeds, roses and loamy soil. The hatred which some of his order feel for Socialists and Demagogues Lord Marshmoreton kept for roseslugs, rose-beetles and the small, yellowish-white insect which is so depraved and sinister a character that it goes through life with an alias—being sometimes called a rose-hopper and sometimes a thrips. A simple soul, Lord Marshmoreton—mild and pleasant. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... used to follow him to the shore, and watch him as he walked along it with his eyes fixed upon the ground. Suddenly he would stop, fall upon his hands and knees, crawl slowly onward, and then with one hand catch something on the sand; an insect, perhaps. He would stick it upon a pin, put it in his hat, and go on his way; and the boys would whisper to one another that there was a mad baker in Thurso. Once he picked up a nut upon the beach, and ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... A great insect has flown in through the window. It buzzes, strikes against the rough cast, rebounds against the globe of the lamp, and then, helpless, its wings singed by the still burning candle, drops on the ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... the Carnivores—"les animaux nuisibles"—the defects of Buffon's higgledy-piggledy plan are almost ludicrously evident, for flesh-eaters, fruit-eaters, insect-eaters, and gnawers rub shoulders with colossal indifference. Doubtless, however, this is to us all the more conspicuous, because use and wont have made readers of the present day acquainted with the advantages of classification, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven, The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes The lightning flash of insect and of bird, The lustre of the long convolvuluses That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows And glories of the broad belt of the world, All these he saw; but what he fain had seen He could not see, the kindly human face, Nor ...
— Beauties of Tennyson • Alfred Tennyson
... annoying insect, the chigoe, or "jigger," is able to bore a hole through the sole of a ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... uncertainty of the signs of death, by M. Bruhier, physician, printed at Paris in 1744, pp. 102, 103, &c., it is shown that they have seen some who have been under water forty-eight hours, others during three days, and during eight days. He adds to this the example of the insect chrysalis, which passes all the winter without giving any signs of life, and the aquatic insects which remain all the winter motionless in the mud; which also happens to the frogs and toads; ants even, against the common opinion, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... any avail. And your evil destiny it was which led you to follow me, which wrapped you in an impenetrable veil and gave you the lightness of foot which, enabled you to walk as noiselessly as the smallest insect, so that I, who in the blackest night see as plainly as a tiger and hear the slightest noise, the humming of midges, far away along the streets, did not perceive you near me. Your evil star has brought you to me, my associate. As ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... smell of sprouting grass! In a blur the violets pass. Whispering from the wildwood come Mayflower's breath and insect's hum. Roses carpeting the ground; Thrushes, orioles, warbling sound: Swing me low, and swing me high, To the warm clouds ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... thrown off by a poet of the Pleiad. I examined an elegant Masquerade by Watteau. I felt, with my eye, the weight of a two-handed sword, a steel gorgerin, a morion. What a thick helmet! What a ponderous breastplate— Seigneur! A giant's garb? No—the carapace of an insect. The men of those days were cuirassed like beetles; their weakness was within them. To-day, on the contrary, our strength is interior, and our armed ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... "Jump for bank, sar," and I "up and jumped," followed by half the crew. Such banks! sheets, and walls, and rubbish heaps of rock, mixed up with trees fallen and standing. One appalling corner I shall not forget, for I had to jump at a rock wall, and hang on to it in a manner more befitting an insect than an insect-hunter, and then scramble up it into a close-set forest, heavily burdened with boulders of all sizes. I wonder whether the rocks or the trees were there first? there is evidence both ways, for in one ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... nature from the subjection of time and space; he is no longer a "puny insect shivering at a breeze"; he is the glory of creation, formed to occupy all time and all extent; bounded, during his residence upon earth, only to the boundaries of the world, and destined to life and immortality in brighter regions, when the fabric of nature ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... waning moon hangs still, And red, above her melancholy hill. 220 By the deep quiet gloom appall'd, she sighs, Stoops her sick head, and shuts her weary eyes. —Breaking th' ascending roar of desert floods, And insect buzz, that stuns the sultry woods, She hears, upon the mountain forest's brow, 225 The death-dog, howling loud and long, below; On viewless fingers counts the valley-clock, Followed by drowsy crow of midnight cock. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... novel and curious invention, made by Dr. Hull, of Alton, Ill., for the purpose of jarring off and catching the curculio from trees infested by this destructive insect. It is a barrow, with arms and braces covered with cloth, and having on one side a slot, which admits the stem of the tree. The curculio catcher, or machine, is run against the tree three or four times, with sufficient ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... three-cornered, whitish-green insect, has of late been very troublesome, as they eat the under side of the leaves of some varieties, especially the Delaware and Norton's Virginia, when the leaf will show rusty specks on the surface, and finally drop off. It has been recommended to go through the vineyard ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... grasshopper, but an insect well known in hot countries, and which in Italy is called Cicala. The grasshopper rests on the ground, but the favorite abode of the Cicala is in the trees ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the most lovely time of the year. The sun was still warm, but the dreaded black fly and other insect pests of the region had disappeared before the sharp frosts that occurred every night. The hilly banks of the St. Maurice were covered with unbroken forest, and "the woods of autumn all around, the vale had put their glory on." Presently Trenton saw Miss Sommerton, accompanied by old ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... matter which contains within itself the germ of life which is about to spring into a new existence; thus he represented the dead body from which the spiritual body was about to rise. He is depicted in the form of a man having a beetle for a head, and this insect became his emblem because it was supposed to be self-begotten and self-produced. To the present day certain of the inhabitants of the Sudan, pound the dried scarabaeus or beetle and drink it in water, believing that it will insure them a numerous progeny. The name "Khepera" ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... usually applied to the larger Discophore, when it is thrown upon the beach and lies a shapeless mass of gelatinous substance on the sand, or is seen floating on the surface of the water. The name gives no idea of the animal as it exists in full life and activity. When we speak of a Bird or an Insect, the mere name calls up at once a characteristic image of the thing; but the name of Jelly-Fish, or Sun-Fish, or Sea-Blubber, as the larger Acalephs are also called, suggests to most persons a vague idea of a fish with a gelatinous body,—or, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... idle, shiftless, eager for compliments, and without two ideas in her vain little head. "Whoever is at the bottom of the affair, she isn't," was his mental comment. "She is just a gadfly, just a gaudy, useless insect, born without a sting, or the spirit to use one if she ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... discovery by one of their number of the active infectant in fever and ague. It has been found in the dust-like spores of a marsh plant—the Pamella. In Paris, at the same time, a woman of rank claims to have discovered the cause of cholera in a microscopic insect, developed in low and filthy localities. Her details were so minute, that the Academy of Science, which began by laughing at the introduction of the matter, has been compelled to listen, and the subject is now ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... organization such as mosses, lichens, diatoms and algae. The animal world, so far as true land-forms are concerned, is limited to types like the protozoa (lowest in the organic scale), rotifera and minute insect-like mites which lurk hidden away amongst the tufts of moss or on the under side of loose stones. Bacteria, most fundamental of all, at the basis, so to speak, of animal and vegetable life, have ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... advise you, after breakfast to come with me on my visit to the steerage. It will take your mind off things and may interest you. There are interesting types there, women, too. But before we go, we must make ourselves insect-proof. We'll puff powder on our clothes in ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... took with him his knife and fork. After he was seated at the dinner table he was subjected to annoyance similar to that which teased Uncle Toby—namely, the hovering of a bee about his head. To relieve himself from the tiny tormentor, he laid down his knife and fork, and attempted to beat off the insect with his hands. It soon flew out at the window; but behold! the laird's knife and fork had disappeared. They were searched for all over the table, and under the table; nowhere could they be found; but when ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... amazing. Here the advantages of gregariousness seem actually to outweigh the most prodigious differences of structure, and we find a condition which is often thought of as a mere habit, capable of enabling the insect nervous system to compete in the complexity of its power of adaptation with that of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... that has provided for them. Quite justifiably, society might annul the testamentary endowment of a hospital for fleas and lice, such as Bishop Heber, in his Indian tour, found existing at Baroach and at Surat, because those particular insect pests could scarcely be retained within the walls of their infirmary. Perhaps, too, society might be justified in similarly preventing the endowment of a hospital for superannuated dogs and cats; whether it would or not depending mainly on the awkward question whether such inferior animals ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... down over the land while they sat there, and before them the great yellow equatorial moon rose slowly over the trees. With the darkness came a greater silence, for the myriad insect life was still. This great silence of Central Africa is wonderfully characteristic. The country is made for silence, the natives are created to steal, spirit-ridden, devil-haunted, through vast tracks of lifeless forest, where nature ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... rocks and islands, which are slowly, but certainly, increasing, is a very small marine insect, by which the substance called coral is formed. These work under water, generation after generation contributing its share in the construction of what, in the course of ages, becomes a solid rock, exalting its head above the face of the surrounding ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... cabinets that Mary so well remembered; and the silk patchwork sofa-cover, the old piano, and Miss Faithfull's arm chair by the fire, her little table with her beautiful knitting, and often a flower or insect that she was copying; for she still drew nicely; and she smiled and consented, as Louis pulled out her portfolios, life-long collections of portraits of birds, flowers, or insects. Her knitting found a sale at the workshop, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mouth of the Amazon were perhaps the most remarkable, as well as the most bloodthirsty animals which abounded in that region. They were remarkable not only for size, but for voracity and numbers. This insect is a pest in every climate. I have found them troublesome on the bar of the Mississippi in the heat of summer; and at the same season exceedingly annoying while navigating the Dwina on the way to Archangel. In the low lands of Java they are seen, heard, and felt to a ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... of those who would require saddle-horses, but failed to find that of Mr. Thompson. However, he did not wish to have Mr. Thompson or any one else left out. He had following him, as he always did, his celebrated war-horse, "Buckskin Joe." This horse was not a very prepossessing "insect." He was buckskin in color, and rather a sorry-looking animal, but he was known all over the frontier as the greatest long-distance and best buffalo-horse living. Will had never allowed any one but himself to ride this horse, but as he had no other there at ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... perfection and vice versa, I do not understand that from one essence or form he is changed into another (for a horse, for instance, would be as much destroyed if it were changed into a man as if it were changed into an insect), but rather we conceive that his power of action, in so far as it is understood by his own nature, is increased or diminished. Finally, by perfection generally, I understand, as I have said, reality; that is to say, the essence of any ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... full of delicate particles of frost on which the sun sparkled, and though there was neither bird nor insect, nor animal, nor stir of leaf, nor swaying branch or waving grass, life palpitated in the air, energy sang its song in the footstep that crunched the frosty ground, that broke the crusted snow; it was in the delicate wind that stirred the flag ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to copy as closely as we can Coue's own procedure. The phrase he uses, "ca passe," makes no mention of the hurt; it is extremely easy to say, and it produces an unbroken stream of sound, like the whirr of a machine or the magnified buzz of an insect, which, as it were, carries the mind off its feet. The phrase recommended by Baudouin, "It is passing off," produces no such effect, and in fact defies all our attempts to repeat it quickly. On the whole, the most suitable ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... was not in Assuncion, but some twenty miles out in the "campo." He rarely visited the capital, except on matters of business. For a business he had; this of somewhat unusual character. It consisted chiefly in the produce of his gun and insect-net. Many a rare specimen of bird and quadruped, butterfly and beetle, captured and preserved by Ludwig Halberger, at this day adorns the public museums of Prussia and other European countries. But for the dispatch and shipment of these he would never ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... of the brook are seen the shadow-like water-gnats, drifting with apparent aimlessness over the surface, but having in view a definite and deadly purpose, as many a half drowned insect ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... now and again a ladybird flickered by or a swallow swooped so near that his darting shadow fell across her book; while all about her sounded the pleasant hum of a summer's day—the soft susurration of the pleasant hum of a thousand insect voices blending into an indefinite, murmurous ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... armor of Homer's Iliad is not to be compared with this little insect's wing-shields. They are nothing but ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... awful one. No sound was heard save an occasional ejaculation between a sigh and a smothered groan from the wretched felon. The candle burned dimly; and as I turned I saw, though I scarcely noticed it at the moment, a dim insect of the moth species, fluttering hurriedly round it, the sound of whose wings mournfully filled up the pauses of myself and my companion. When the nerves are strained to their uttermost, by such trifling circumstances are we affected. Here (thought I) there has been no ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... shears, in insect guise, Behold us at your revel! That we may tender, filial-wise, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... vase dashed into a thousand fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly which, grown old in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect fluttered lightly through the chamber and settled on the snowy ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... keen observer the little orb-weaving spider may have suggested this form of occupation. Be this as it may, the child who is a lover of nature will be quick to perceive the strong resemblance he bears to this little insect while at work with his toy knitter, going from post to post just as the insect worked its net in spiral form on ...
— Spool Knitting • Mary A. McCormack
... blooming, their preferred localities or habitats, and finally according to their proper families—by the classification adopted by the International Botanical Congress. Special attention has been given to the flowers' insect visitors. This large volume (p. 131) contains thirty-two pages of color plates, and forty-eight in black and white. Children learn so much from association with a book of this sort that it has been placed, because ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... there, weighing out prayers for me, Without hearing the plates of meat [17] Of a slop, who pinched him for "d. and d." [18] And disturbing a peaceful beat, And I smiled as I closed my two mince pies [19] In my insect promenade; For out of his nibs I had taken a rise, [20] And his stay on the ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... and pitiless community, but we scatter the wasps, and it is likely that each one of them, in the unrestricted and irresponsible career to which he has been unwillingly forced, will prove a much more angry and dangerous insect than he had ever ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... that we find in every form of life? Desire of some sort—some unexplained motive power that impels even the smallest insect on its queer travels. You must have watched some infinitesimal red spider on a fence rail, bustling along—why and whither? Who knows? And when you come to man, what a chaos of hungers and impulses keep thrusting him through his cycle of quaint tasks! And in every ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... upon him night and day like that insect which, having once entered the brain of an elk, gnaws ceaselessly at it until the miserable victim's last breath is drawn. While he retained for Pepeeta a devotion which tormented him with its intensity, his guilt made him tremble in her presence. He shuddered when he approached ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... enthusiastic welcome which they have given to "the republic" in his humble person. The phylloxera has destroyed the vineyards of this or that region, but "the republican minister of agriculture" is successfully extirpating the injurious insect. The new schoolhouses of another city owe their magnificence "to the deep solicitude of the republic for the education of the masses," while the recently constructed bridge over the river is the work of "the engineers ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... The bee first taken had, indeed, filled itself to satiety, and at first seemed to be too heavy to rise on the wing. After a few moments of preparation, however, up it went, circling around the spot, as if uncertain what course to take. The eye of Ben never left it, and when the insect darted off, as it soon did, in an air-line, he saw it for fifty yards after the others had lost sight of it. Ben took the range, and was silent fully a ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... wall the maimed creature would crawl to the usual place on my hand for breakfast. Indeed, the long years of solitude had produced in me such an unutterable longing for the companionship of something which had life that I never destroyed any kind of insect which found its way into my cell—even when mosquitoes lit on my face I always let them have their fill undisturbed, and felt well repaid by getting a glimpse of them as they flew and with the music ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... of great observation, seldom proceeded far without discovering some object to interest his attention. He had remained a considerable distance behind his mother, exploring the hedges for some new flower or insect that he had not before examined, when his attention was attracted by a wasp, which, having seized a fly almost as large as himself, was endeavouring to carry the prize to his nest; but the wind blowing in a ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... against certain insect plagues which once afflicted him, and the brilliant professor laid his head on an old cork fender and slept like an infant. He did not return until next evening; he went without books, tobacco, alcohol, and conversation, and he never had an ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... spoke, for the first time, a sudden misgiving, like the pinch of an insect, brushed Barron's consciousness. He had not, as a matter of fact, examined the Dawes letter very carefully, having been, as he now clearly remembered, in a state of considerable mental excitement during the whole time it was in his possession and thinking much more of the effect of the first crop ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... resting place, where the camels found some little grazing, from a plant called ahgul. Starting at sunrise, they had another fatiguing day, over the same kind of desert, without seeing one living thing that did not belong to the kafila, not a bird, nor even an insect; the sand is beautifully fine, round, and red. It is difficult to give the most distant idea of the stillness and beauty of a night scene, on a desert of this description. The distance between the resting places is not sufficiently great, for the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... insect life that thy warm breath wakes Now people earth and air; And the carolling birds have come back to dwell In the charms of thy presence fair. Need we wonder all hearts with joyous beat Watch the changes thou dost bring, And, with ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... ineffable melancholy of twilight rising from an unknown strand; then the solemn coldness of moonlight watches, the scent of the burnt land under the fierce sun, when all nature was hushed save the dreamy buzz of insect-life: the green coolness of underwood or forest, the unutterable harmony of the sighing breeze, and the song of wild birds during the long patient ambushes of partisan war; the taste of bread in hunger, of the stream in the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle |
