"Plumage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had then to deal with his sister. She towered over him, pinker than her pink muslin. The ruffles seemed agitated all over her slender, girlish figure, like the plumage of an angry bird. She caught her small brother by the shoulders, and shook him violently, until the dark hair which he wore rather long waved ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... richly dyed wool, she was habited in Indian garb from head to foot. In two black, lustrous braids, twisted with feather and quill and ribbon, her wealth of hair hung over her shoulders down the front of her slender form. A robe of dark blue stuff, rich with broidery of colored bead and bright-hued plumage, hung, close clinging, and her feet were shod in soft moccasins, also deftly worked with bead and quill. But it was her face that chained the gaze of all, and that drew from the pallid lips of Lieutenant Field a gasp of mingled consternation and amaze. Without a vestige of ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... a hilltop, and through the green garden the white dresses of the schoolgirls fluttered like the snowy plumage of a hundred doves. Obeying a sudden impulse, a flock of little ones would race through a deluge of leaf-entangled rays towards a pet companion standing at the end of a gravel-walk examining the flower she has just picked, the sunlight glancing along her little ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... extremities of these sticks, and fix them so as to obtain a vault. All the prominences in the materials employed are turned towards the outside, so that the interior of the room may be smooth and the birds may not catch their plumage in it. This done, the little architects, to embellish their retreat, transport to it a number of conspicuous objects, such as very white stones from a neighbouring stream, shells, the bright feathers of the parroquet, whatever ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... of the first we remember was in Madrid, at the home of Canovas del Castillo, Prime Minister during the Regency. Dejeuner used to be served at one end of the conservatory, in the shadow of tall palms, while fountains played, birds with gay plumage sang, and the air was as fragrant as the tropics. For comfort, deep red rugs were put down on the white marble floors. Which reminds us that in many Spanish hand-made rugs, what is known as "Isabella white" figures conspicuously. The ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... arm away from her father's grasp, and stood up, with a convulsive flutter of her white plumage like a bird. She flung back her curls and disclosed her beautiful pale face, all strained to terrified resolve, and her dilated blue eyes "I will not!" she cried out, addressing her father alone, "I will not, father. I have made up my ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... lamps. He is in the midst of the crowd in an avenue of cypress-trees. To right and left little paths lead towards huts erected in a wood of pomegranate-trees, which protect lattices of reeds. The men, for the most part, have pointed caps with laced robes, like the plumage of peacocks. There are people from the North clad in bearskins; nomads in brown woollen cloaks; pale Gangarides with long ear-rings; and the classes, like the nationalities, appear to be confused, for sailors and stone-cutters jostle against princes wearing tiaras of carbuncles and carrying ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... wealth; public honour is security. The feather that adorns the royal bird supports its flight; strip him of his plumage, and you fix ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... our heart and mind. For this reason alone are content and artistic shape harmoniously wrought. The mere sensuously concrete external nature as such has not this purpose for its only origin. The gay and variegated plumage of the birds shines unseen, and their song dies away unheard; the torch-thistle which blossoms only for a night withers without having been admired in the wilds of southern forests; and these forests, groves of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... mark him. One morning in July, standing for a moment in the shade beside a birch copse which borders the same road, a jay flew up into the tree immediately overhead, so near that the peculiar shape of the head and bill and all the plumage was visible. He looked down twice, and then flew. Another morning there was a jay on the ground, searching about, not five yards from the road, nor twenty from a row of houses. It was at the corner of a copse which adjoins them. If not so constantly shot at the jay would ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... making decoys for geese, by chopping blocks of dry pine into rough images of their bodies, and fashioning their necks and heads from bent willow sticks; as well as roughly staining the completed models to represent the plumage. And while he worked he talked of the coming of ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... great variety of lizards, in consequence of which we named it Lizard Island. During our stay here, two birds,* rare on this part of the coast, were shot; they were of a smaller kind than any I had before seen, and differed from them in plumage, being without the white collar round the neck. Leaving Lizard Island, we continued our southerly route, and ere long saw more land ahead, lying like a blue cloud on the horizon. Ten miles brought us abreast of the high ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... accomplishments would be neglected! Talk about conceit as much as you like, it is to human character what salt is to the ocean; it keeps it sweet, and renders it endurable. Say rather it is like the natural unguent of the sea-fowl's plumage, which enables him to shed the rain that falls on him and the wave in which he dips. When one has had ALL his conceit taken out of him, when he has lost ALL his illusions, his feathers will soon soak through, and he will ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... 'em ruffle their plumage and gulp down a sob or two,' he reflected, his tongue in his cheek, a little intoxicated, as usual, by his own ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... noticed here only because it is the first animal or vegetable pigment, with copper as an essential element, which has been hitherto isolated. The colour is extracted by solution in an alkali, and precipitation by an acid, and is changed on long exposure to air and moisture to a green hue. As the entire plumage of a bird yields not more than three grains of pigment, turacine must be looked upon as ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... the folds of her travelling dress with both hands, as if the dove had taken a fancy to smooth its plumage. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... part of the park there were cages, and in the cages were lions, and tigers, and monkeys, and zebras, and elephants, and all kinds of animals! There were birds, too, with red and blue plumage and beautiful golden tails. There were parrots and cockatoos and pheasants. Wild ducks were swimming in the ponds; and two swans sailed, like lovely white ships, to the place where the Twins stood, and opened their bills ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... the house-tops to the streets, or hovered about the plaza and bosky alamedas of poplar, pepper and eucalyptus trees in search of stray grains of corn. Humming-birds and butterflies flashed their wings and gorgeous plumage in the sunshine as they darted in and out among the foliage in the patios and gardens at the rear of the houses, luxuriant with fruit and flowers as was attested by the orange and lemon, pomegranate and fig trees, heavy with ripening fruit and the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... wave, and the next moment lay on her side with her masts in the water and wave after wave sweeping over her decks. In a few minutes the ship righted again, the water rolling from her as it drips from the plumage of a swan, and the crew, drenched to the skin, returned to ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... it was never a handicap with him, but rather the plumage of flight. Sometimes, when just the right word did not come, he would turn his head a little at different angles, as if looking about him for the precise term. He would find it directly, and it was invariably ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... their white statues and fountains, lost their effectiveness closed in as they were by high walls of vine-covered brick. It was rumored that once a stately peacock had here once flaunted his gorgeous plumage, giving his name to the inn itself—but this legend rested ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... its height on the Asamuk. The woodthrush was nearing the end of its song; a vast concourse of young robins in their speckled plumage joined chattering every night in the thickest cedars; and one or two broods of young ducks were seen on the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the weapons of the Inca lords were frequently mounted with gold or silver. Their heads were protected by casques made either of wood or of the skins of wild animals, and sometimes richly decorated with metal and with precious stones, surmounted by the brilliant plumage of the tropical birds. These, of course, were the ornaments only of the higher orders. The great mass of the soldiery were dressed in the peculiar costume of their provinces, and their heads were wreathed with a sort of turban or roll of different- colored cloths, that produced ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... conquerors of Peru. Many of the ladies wore quaint costumes and rich attire of the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, while a few were attired in grotesque costumes. Felicita was dressed as a princess of the court of the ancient Incas, with a head dress of the rich plumage of tropic birds. I was dressed in the ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... marched along and shot the game of the country, namely, one Tetrao Canadensis, one spruce-partridge, making in all one bird, quite too pretty to shoot with its red and black plumage. The spruce-partridge is rather rare in inhabited Maine, and is malignantly accused of being bitter in flesh, and of feeding on spruce-buds to make itself distasteful. Our bird we found sweetly berry-fed. The bitterness, if any, was that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... found. No drop of blood is near it, for it is closed by a plug of down rammed into it by the shot. The Fly takes up her position without separating the feathers or uncovering the wound. She remains here for two hours without stirring, motionless, with her abdomen concealed beneath the plumage. My eager curiosity does not distract her from her ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... caroll'd till peep of the dawn, The Lark gently hinted 'twas time to be gone; And his clarion, so shrill, gave the company warning, That Chanticleer scented the gales of the morning, So they chirp'd in full chorus, a friendly adieu; And, with hearts beating light as the plumage that grew On their merry-thought bosoms, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... appears first, the locks of her dishevelled hair twined round with venomous and deadly serpents, ordering the wild fig-tree and the funereal cypress to be rooted up from the sepulchres on which they grew, and these, together with the egg of a toad smeared with blood, the plumage of the screech-owl, various herbs brought from Thessaly and Georgia, and bones torn from the jaws of a famished dog, to be burned in flames fed with perfumes from Colchis. Of the assistant witches, one traces with hurried steps the edifice, sprinkling it, as she ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... on his knees, and at the end expressing himself fully repaid by getting a single capital shot at a wild peacock! He was also gratified by bringing down a magnificent jungle-cock—a bird which resembles our barn-door fowl in form, but its plumage is vastly more brilliant, and its flight more lofty and sustained, than any of which the bird can boast in its tame state. Our scramble in the mud brought us within sight of a drove of several hundred buffaloes. We saw also several troops of wild deer; ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... buds and bulbs the living fibre shoots On lengthening branches, and protruding roots; Or on the father's side from bursting glands The adhering young its nascent form expands; In branching lines the parent-trunk adorns, And parts ere long like plumage, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... had stood watching the event in speechless consternation. One after the other stepped up to the prostrate bird, which was killed by its violent fall, and selecting a feather from its snow-white plumage, decorated himself therewith. [Footnote: Since this event, say the Indians of this tribe, the plumage of the white heron has been used for ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... evening, if it is remembered for nothing else, will be remembered in that place for its strange sunset. It looked like the end of the world. All the heaven seemed covered with a quite vivid and palpable plumage; you could only say that the sky was full of feathers, and of feathers that almost brushed the face. Across the great part of the dome they were grey, with the strangest tints of violet and mauve and an unnatural ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... not be, I fear." He pulled down his brows, considering the proposition, then shook his head positively, with a little sigh. "You will remember—was it not Darwin who said that women, in order to attract men, borrow the plumage of male birds, which these have acquired to please the females of their kind? Beauty must be the first law of life to the sex that has not the privilege of choosing. Under the circumstances, it is surprising how much of plainness women have preserved. Possibly because ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... on a certain day hunting in the vicinity of the capital, there suddenly appeared soaring and wheeling in the air a bird, whose plumage was of the most beautiful and glossy green. The prince let fly an arrow, but without effect, and the bird suddenly disappeared. It was in vain that he turned his eye to all quarters, in hopes of again discovering ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... was kept up. The falcons were brought from Flanders, for, except in the Isle of Skye, they have been extirpated in Great Britain like many other of our fine indigenous birds. Sir John kept fancy pigeons of all breeds. He told me he could alter the colour of their plumage in three years by cross-breeding, but that it required fully six to alter ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... voice of a bird, Heard by the lander in a lonely isle Moves him to think what kind of bird it is, That sings so delicately clear, and make Conjecture of the plumage ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... reaches of sun and shade in the aisles of the forest. Glad of the spring, and of love, and of morning, the wild birds were singing: Jays to each other called harshly, then mellowly fluted together; Sang the oriole songs as golden and gay as his plumage; Pensively piped the querulous quails their greetings unfrequent, While, on the meadow elm, the meadow lark gushed forth in music, Rapt, exultant, and shaken with the great joy of his singing; Over the river, loud-chattering, aloft in the air, the ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... rugosity[obs3], salebrosity|, corrugation, nodosity[obs3]; arborescence[obs3] &c. 242; pilosity[obs3]. brush, hair, beard, shag, mane, whisker, moustache, imperial, tress, lock, curl, ringlet; fimbriae, pili, cilia, villi; lovelock; beaucatcher[obs3]; curl paper; goatee; papillote, scalp lock. plumage, plumosity[obs3]; plume, panache, crest; feather, tuft, fringe, toupee. wool, velvet, plush, nap, pile, floss, fur, down; byssus[obs3], moss, bur; fluff. knot (convolution) 248. V. be rough &c. adj.; go against the grain. render-rough ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... cat out of the bag, when I might, according to the usual way of the world, have sported for awhile in borrowed plumage, and rejoiced in the reputation of being in more prosperous circumstances without fear of detection, I determined to pursue the same course, and make use of the little insight I had obtained into the ways of the land-jobbers of Canada, to procure a cleared farm ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... before I called him from the field I exchanged a few words with the milkmaid, who sat on a bench, in all the primness of expectation, and decked with the most gaudy plumage. I rated her imaginary lover for his tardiness, and vowed eternal hatred to them both for not making me a bride's attendant. She listened to me with an air in which embarrassment was mingled sometimes with exultation and sometimes with malice. I left her at length, and ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... the months, the student of ornithology can least afford to lose. Most birds are nesting then, and in full song and plumage. And what is a bird without its song? Do we not wait for the stranger to speak? It seems to me that I do not know a bird till I have heard its voice; then I come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human interest to me. I have met the ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... necessary result of a slight continuous impression on the senses and the mind, which kept both in action without furnishing the food they required to work upon. If you ever saw a crow with a king-bird after him, you will get an image of a dull speaker and a lively listener. The bird in sable plumage flaps heavily along his straight-forward course, while the other sails round him, over him, under him, leaves him, comes back again, tweaks out a black feather, shoots away once more, never losing sight of him, and finally reaches the crow's perch at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... I knew by the greater brightness of his plumage, and his more slender form, seemed to be fondest of bringing sticks, one of which was too long for the mouth of the jar to admit. It was very amusing to witness his efforts to get the stick in; but it would not do; the stick fell to the ground. All day long, these pretty ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... whimpered on the morning in question, when I lifted him out bodily—such a miserable Dot, looking like a starved dove in his white plumage; but he cheered up at the sight of the fire and hot coffee in the snug parlor, and whispered a little entreaty for forgiveness as I stooped over him ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... evenings, and thence to the bowling-alley, the fish-stew and the fruit-garden. At every step some fresh surprise arrested Odo; but the terrible vision of that other garden planted with the dead bodies of the Innocents robbed the spectacle of its brightness, dulled the plumage of the birds behind their gilt wires and cast a deeper shade over the beech-grove, where figures of goat-faced men lurked balefully in the twilight. Odo was glad when they left the blackness of this grove for the open walks, where gardeners were working and he had ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... overreach all the innocent young flowery beauties of the spring with one rich trill of colour, like a high note of a bird above a wide chorus of others. Mistress Mary that morning wore a tabby petticoat of a crimson colour, and a crimson satin bodice shining over her arms and shoulders like the plumage of a bird, and down her back streamed her curls, shining like gold under her gauze love-hood. I knew well how she had sat up late the night before fashioning that hood from one which her friend Cicely Hyde's grandmother had sent her from England, and I knew, ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... creep up to the top of the tree, and sit trimming my feathers, spreading them out and trying to make the most of their scanty appearance, till my patience was rewarded; for beyond a doubt, at the end of the fifth month my plumage was something wonderful to behold for beauty. As for my head being large, it now helped to show off the splendid yellow crest; and the awkward look was quite gone. Still my temper hadn't improved; indeed I think it was worse, for conceit was added to my other bad qualities; and when I would ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... cranes, four Indian spoonbills, together with three storks, three or four cockatoos, whose brilliant plumage outvies the gayest robe ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... the soft patter of the constantly dropping nuts bounding from the protective taa-taas, and the squawks and screeches of countless cuttywinks and fatu-liva birds, those queens of the tropics whose gorgeous plumage swept across our path. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... as well in stone-coloured merino as in blue. Should a bird of paradise wear the plumage of a thrush ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... her strong inclination to sit down was owing to want of exercise, and the heaviness of her eyelids a freak of imagination; so, speedily smoothing her ruffled plumage, she ran down to tell her father of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Spain! awake! advance! Lo! Chivalry, your ancient Goddess, cries, But wields not, as of old, her thirsty lance, Nor shakes her crimson plumage in the skies: Now on the smoke of blazing bolts she flies, And speaks in thunder through yon engine's roar: In every peal she calls—"Awake! arise!" Say, is her voice more feeble than of yore, When her war-song was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... long-legged grey birds stalked consequentially at the water's edge. She disturbed a flock of parrots in the white cedar tree, and a covey of duck rose with a whirring of pinions and a mighty quacking, shaking the drips off their plumage so that they glittered like diamonds in the sun. From the limbs of the dead gum tree hung flying foxes, their bat-like wings extended limply, and a gigantic crane stood in melancholy ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the whole aspect of his own climate is verdant. He might find one plant stately enough to shade him from the torrid sun, and to harbour among its boughs many a tropical bird with its bright metallic plumage; but he could not find a lea covered with lowing herds, or with bleating flocks, on the soft sward of which he could lie down, and listen to the lark that sings to him from heaven, sending down its clear notes on the first sunbeams of spring. It is in temperate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... painter who could set before us the mazes of the sapphire brook, the lake with its fringe of myrtles, the flowery meadows, the grottoes overhung by vines, the forests shining with Hesperian fruit and with the plumage of gorgeous birds, the massy shade of that nuptial bower which showered down roses on the sleeping lovers, what should we think of a connoisseur, who should tell us that this painting, though finer than the absurd picture in the old ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... princes as an independent fief, but now subject to a Dutch Governor, has become the capital of Celebes, and occupies an important commercial position. The wharves are filled with bales of copra, mother-of-pearl shells, plumage of native birds, dried fish, bundles of rattan, and precious woods from the primeval forests of the interior. The boom of the fisherman's drum echoes across the water in constant reverberations, a secularised relic of the religious past, originally serving the purpose ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... falling bunch of fruit and caught it ere it reached the water; while ungainly toucans plumped clumsily down upon the branches, and sat, in striking contrast, beside the lovely pompadours, with their claret-coloured plumage ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... air and the perfume there, And bathed in a fountain's spray; And I smoothed the wings and the plumage rare Of a bird for his roundelay, And fluttered a rag from a signal-crag For ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... effected. The simple gown of wool and cotton gave place to loose and flowing draperies of silk and satin; the stiff neckerchief was removed to display fair shoulders and voluptuous breasts; the hat was bedecked by feathers of rare plumage and rich colour; the cloaks changed hues from sad to gay; the hoods being of "yellow bird's eye," and other bright tints. Indeed, the prodigal manner in which ladies of quality now exposed their bosoms, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... bestowed upon me to-day. But that is neither here nor there. Let me enjoin you all to live patriots, avoiding ceremonies and performing sacrifices for your country. And above all, live as good christians, and not as fluttering butterflies, who attract only with the gay color of their plumage while they live and die soon to be forgotten. And as to the nation itself, why, may the devil get me, (and I'm no friend of his,) if I don't think all that is needed to render it safe, is just to let it alone. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... country. A ragged drapery of long, faded grass hung from the lower branches of the trees, marking the height of the last rise of the river,—some eighteen or twenty feet above its present level. Here and there a white heron stood on the shore, his snowy plumage glittering in the sunlight; numbers of ciganas (the pheasants of the Amazons) clustered in the bushes; once a pair of king vultures rested for a moment within gunshot, but flew out of sight as our canoe approached; and now and then an alligator showed his head above water. As we floated along through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... accounted for his lameness by some handsome story of a wound received at the famous Battle of the Pines, when our tribe, overcome by numbers, was driven from its ancient camping-ground. Of late years the jays have visited us only at intervals; and in winter their bright plumage, set off by the snow, and their cheerful cry, are especially welcome. They would have furnished Aesop with a fable, for the feathered crest in which they seem to take so much satisfaction is often their fatal snare. Country boys make a hole with ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... born so beautiful and yet so hapless? Insects can sting, and even the meekest of beasts will fight when brought to bay. The birds whose plumage is sought to deck some bonnet can fly from its pursuer, the furred animal whose coat you covet for your own may hide at your approach. Alas! The only flower known to have wings is the butterfly; all others stand helpless ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... Crow had a contention about their plumage. The Crow put an end to the dispute by saying, "Your feathers are all very well in the spring, but mine ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... much forwarder in all their habits of motion. Thus the colt, and the lamb, are much more perfect animals than the blind puppy, and the naked rabbit; and the chick of the pheasant, and the partridge, has more perfect plumage, and more perfect eyes, as well as greater aptitude to locomotion, than the callow nestlings of the dove, and of the wren. The parents of the former only find it necessary to shew them their food, and to teach them to take it up; whilst those of the latter are obliged for many days ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... perpendicular, while at one end is the witch's rock resembling the ship in full sail. Drangey is the home of innumerable eider-ducks, who swim at will in and about the surrounding waters. The drake is a very handsome bird, a large portion of his plumage being white; the hen is smaller, and brown in colour. In disposition the birds are very shy and retiring. The hen builds her nest with down plucked from her own breast; this nest the farmer immediately takes possession of; the poor bird makes a second in ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... forgotten; she rushed into the ring, seized upon the rival champion by the hair, and was on the point of wreaking on him her puny vengeance, when a buxom, strapping, country lass, the sweetheart of the prostrate swain, pounced upon her like a hawk, and would have stripped her of her fine plumage in a twinkling, had she also not been seized in ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... transformed into gardens and shrubberies; enjoyed the rare, deliciously scented flowers which peeped forth here and there amid thickets of myrtle and orange tree; amused themselves with the birds of variegated plumage, suspended from the boughs in wire cages of most delicate workmanship. Each Ah! of delight that sounded from the lips of the Electress found its repeated echo in the long line of gentlemen and ladies following her; and these loud exclamations of ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... flycatchers were most commonly seen, one species of the latter frequently dazzling our eyes with its brilliant vermilion plumage. ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... the bright colours of this beautiful little bird: you can scarcely find one with prettier plumage or a sweeter note. His native song is not very remarkable, but he is so docile, and so readily taught to whistle different airs, that he is highly valued. Bullfinches are common enough in our woods and gardens, but gardeners are sad enemies ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... about in the sunshine. It was perhaps their first exodus from the nest, for as yet they were without the slightest sense of fear. They allowed the girls to catch them, fondle them, and stroke their lovely plumage; they would fly delicately away, twittering with pleasure, then flit back to the caressing hands like sprites at play. Anything more innocent and beautiful it would have been impossible to conceive; it was like a glimpse into Paradise ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... are distinguished for their variety and for the rich plumage with which they are adorned. During a single month passed in Ardjoeno, a mountain situated in the regency of Paseroean, in the east of the island, Mr. Wallace collected ninety-eight species of birds. Among these he mentions the ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... through the city, and walked along watching the Zopilotes—great turkey-buzzards—with their bald heads and foul dingy-black plumage. They were sitting in compact rows on parapets of houses and churches, and seemed specially to affect the cross of the cathedral, where they perched, two on each arm, and some on the top. When some offal was thrown into the streets, they came down leisurely upon it, one after ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... robe of raccoon skins, with the tails hanging down like tassels. On either side of him sat an Indian girl of sixteen or seventeen years, and along the walls of the room two rows of grim warriors, and back of them two rows of women with faces and shoulders painted red, hair bedecked with the plumage of birds, and necks strung with chains ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... Cambridge would have sounded like the crash of doom to the cautious old tenants of the Hanover aviary. If there were any drops of false or questionable doctrine in the silver shower of eloquence under which they had been sitting, the plumage of orthodoxy glistened with unctuous repellents, and a shake or two on coming out of church left the sturdy old dogmatists ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... a beautiful white bird, Webfooted, not unlike a dove in size And plumage (probably it might have erred Upon its course), passed oft before their eyes, And tried to perch, although it saw and heard The men within the boat, and in this guise It came and went, and fluttered round them till Night fell:—this ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... moment imagine the scene. Not the moment of struggle, but the pause that succeeds. The angels of good have triumphed, and though the plumage of their wings may droop, they are white and dazzling so as no "fuller of earth could whiten them." The moonlight of peace rests upon the battle field, where evil passions lie wounded and trampled under feet. Strains ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Island of Cuba is a joy, and Havana is like Heaven, until you come to pay your bill, when it is hell. Streets so wide you cannot see a creditor on the other side, pavements as smooth as the road to perdition, and tropical trees, plants and flowers, with birds of rare plumage, you feel like sitting on a cold bench in the shade, and wishing all your friends were here to enjoy a taste of what will come to those who are truly good, in the hereafter, when suddenly you are taken with a chill up the spinal column, and a cold sweat comes out on the forehead, and the internal ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... breathing; the bird appears stupid and sleepy and docs not care to move about; appetite poor, wings drooping, plumage ruffled, a thick mucus, colored with blood, escapes from the mouth, comb and wattles show a dark-red color from lack of oxygen in the blood. This disease is of very short duration, the bird dying within a few hours. It is ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... (Anas boschas).—The mallard is splendid in plumage, and in shape is far more graceful than his domesticated brother. In early winter the wild ducks fly overhead in a wedge-shaped phalanx, and by and by they pair, and if disturbed start up with a sudden quack, quack from the copse-wood pond. Broods of downy wild ducks have been ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... than it was, and tilted from side to side in his undulating walk. He glimmered at you from the narrow slits of fine blue-greenish eyes, under branching brows, which with age grew more and more like a sort of plumage, and he was apt to smile into your face with a subtle but amiable perception, and yet with a sort of remote absence; you were all there for him, but he was not all there ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... resinous odours, and an enervating warmth has descended to the depths of the lower forests. But Winter has not yet spread its wings for its last flight. Spring's approach has been heralded by its feathered trumpeters, garbed in their sober plumage. It is on its way, that is all. The transition of the seasons is at hand. Winter still resists, and the gentle legions of Spring have yet to fight out their annual battle. The forests are astir with wild, furred life; the fierce life ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... for the display of their natural vanity. Anyone who has seen a Zoological Park peacock working overtime on a Sunday afternoon in summer when the crowds of visitors are greatest, solely to display the ocellated splendor of his tail plumage, surely must conclude that the bird is well aware of the glories of his tail, and also that he positively enjoys showing off to ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... History—How to Make and Use Them,' et cetery, told me how to twist the cocoanut bark into a cord, and to shape the limb of the gum-gum tree into a bow and arrow. Page 396, 'Birds, Tropical, Temperate, and Arctic—Song Birds, Edible Birds, and Birds of Plumage,' et cetery, with their Latin and common names, and over one thousand illustrations, told me which to kill, and which to eat. Page 100, 'The Complete Kitchen Guide,' being eight hundred tested recipes—roasts, ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... which wafted down from the cataracts above the scents of a thousand flowers. Gradually his ear became accustomed to the roar, and, above its mighty undertone, he could hear the whisper of the wind among the shrubs, and the hum of myriad insects; while the rock manakin, with its saffron plumage, flitted before him from stone to stone, calling cheerily, and seeming to lead him on. Suddenly, scrambling over the rocky flower-beds to the other side of the isle, he came upon a little shady beach, which, beneath a bank of stone some ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... shown as a sprinkler for the holy water in the hand (in the first, second and fourth examples) of god D. Landa (1864, p. 150)[317-[]] describes in the ceremony of the baptism of children, that the leader of the rite wore on his head a kind of mitre embroidered with plumage in some manner and in his hand a small holy-water sprinkler of wood, carved skillfully, of which the filaments were the tails of serpents, similar ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... letter,—all that was meant as well as all that was written. She had told herself again and again that there had been that between her and the lover she had lost,—tender embraces, warm kisses, a bird-like pressure of the plumage,—which alone should make her deem it unfit that she should be to another man as she had been to him, even should her heart allow it. It was against this doctrine that her friend had preached, with more or less of explicitness in her sermon. And how was the truth? If she could ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... happy, a wild rose in sunshine. She was in Richmond, and she had found a friend, and the army was surely coming! As the three rose from the church step, there passed a knot of mounted soldiers. It chanced to be the President's staff, with several of Stuart's captains, and the plumage of these was yet bright. The Confederate uniform was a handsome one; these who wore it were young and handsome men. From spur to hat and plume they exercised a charm. Somewhere, in the distance, a band was playing, and their noble, mettled horses pranced to the music. As they passed ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... what our Maker left unmade in making the human race. The lower animals were all sent into the world in appropriate, finished, and well-fitting costume, provided with direct and effective means of subsistence and defence. The eagle had his imperial plumage, beak, and talons; the elephant his leathern roundabout and travelling trunk, with its convenient air-pump; and the beaver, at once a carpenter and a mason, had his month full of chisels and his tail a trowel. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... over her forehead, her eyes roved past him, searching the littered room for the twentieth time in the hour, looking, seeking—and suddenly they fell on something—a crushed and rumpled hat of her own, a milliner's masterpiece, laden with florid plumage, lying almost behind him on a couch end where some prying detective had dropped it, with a big, round black button shining dully from the midst of its damaged tulle crown. She knew that button well. It was the imitation-jet head of a hatpin—a ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... temper, but merely bided her time. Sooner or later, she knew, of course, this boy, who had seen nothing of city life and who was evidently dazed with all the magnificence of the stately home overlooking the Park, would find his happiest resting-place beneath the soft plumage of her little wing. And if by any chance he should fall in love with her—and what more natural; did not everybody fall in love with her?—would it not be wiser to let him think she returned it, especially if she saw any disposition on the young ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the number of six or eight. The young have quite the look of the young of the dove in many respects. When nearly grown they are covered with long blue pin-feathers as long as darning-needles, without a bit of plumage on them. They part on the back and hang down on each side by their own weight. With its curious feathers and misshapen body, the young bird is anything but handsome. They never open their mouths when approached, as many young birds ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... set your mind at ease. You wouldn't, in this instance, have had to spend any of your own money; and at your marriage by and bye, I would still have borne in mind the exceptional regard you had shown the Chao family. But now that you've got your full plumage, you've forgotten your extraction, and chosen a lofty branch to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... stupid; they repeat the puns of Tiercelin and Potier, they have sack coats, stablemen's waistcoats, shirts of coarse linen, trousers of coarse cloth, boots of coarse leather, and their rigmarole resembles their plumage. One might make use of their jargon to put new soles on their old shoes. And all this awkward batch of brats has political opinions, if you please. Political opinions should be strictly forbidden. They fabricate systems, they recast society, they demolish ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... must say that I think the instinct for beauty and all the desire to produce beautiful things, which you and Goethe refer to as the "Art Impulse," is a kind of sex quality, not unlike the song of birds or their beautiful plumage. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... and scythe! What power Can stay him in his silent course, or melt His iron heart to pity! On, still on, He presses and forever. The proud bird, The Condor of the Andes, that can soar Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave The fury of the northing hurricane, And bath its plumage in the thunder's home Furls his broad wing at nightfall, and sinks down To rest upon his mountain crag; but Time Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness, And Night's deep darkness has no chain ...
— Songs from the Southland • Various
... instincts, faithful is their fire, No foreign beauty tempts to false desire; The snow-white vesture, and the glittering crown, The simple plumage, or the glossy down Prompt not their loves:— the patriot bird pursues 5 His well acquainted tints, and kindred hues. Hence through their tribes no mix'd polluted flame, No monster-breed to mark the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... marvelling pleasure, for the first time since her captivity; and putting forth her hand, which was even whiter than the wing, she patted the bright neck of the glad stranger, and gently stroked its soft plumage. ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... of Argos. Above Pieria he passed and leapt from the upper air into the deep. Then he sped along the wave like the cormorant, that chaseth the fishes through the perilous gulfs of the unharvested sea, and wetteth his thick plumage in the brine. Such like did Hermes ride upon the press of the waves. But when he had now reached that far-off isle, he went forth from the sea of violet blue to get him up into the land, till he came to a great cave, wherein ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... doubt that they were falling rapidly. Already they grew larger to the eye. Presently the heron disengaged himself and flapped heavily away, the worse for that deadly embrace, while the peregrine, shaking her plumage, ringed once more so as to get high above the quarry and deal it a second and more fatal blow. The Bishop smiled, for nothing, as it ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... produces. The other copartment is enriched with feathers and so inimitably blended as to produce the happiest effect. In this ceiling is painted all the birds and fowls of the country, in all their splendid elegance of plumage. The sofas and furniture are rich in the extreme: and in this elegant recess, an idle traveller may have an agreeable lounge, and at one view comprehend the whole natural history of this vast continent. In the centre ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... new and rare forms flaunt their gorgeous colors and perfume the air with strange delicious odors; great trees with tufts of far-reaching leaves cast their welcome shade, and long vines trail gracefully from their living supports. Wonderful birds with brilliant plumage flit about, as through the openings in the trees glimpses are given of long waves rolling gently upon the glistening beach. It is only necessary to give free rein to the imagination and to visualize the scenes that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... the ruminants the linear (moist, sulphurous) pole. The carnivorous quadrupeds form the intermediary (mercurial) group. As ur-phenomenal types we may name among the birds the eagle, clothed in its dry, silicic plumage, hovering with far-spread wings in the heights of the atmosphere, united with the expanses of space through its far-reaching sight; among the ruminants, the cow, lying heavily on the ground of the earth, given over entirely to ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... Writing" close under his arm, adroitly shielding the title from public scrutiny. We stood a moment in the autumn silence outside the hotel door, watching a maple across the street, the line of its boughs showing strong and black amid its airy yellow plumage. The still air was full of leaves that sailed to earth in leisurely ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... gun, waving tartans, and the single plume in his cap, which in those days denoted the Highland gentleman and soldier; although I observe that the present military taste has decorated the Highland bonnet with a quantity of black plumage resembling that which is borne before funerals. At length, as the distance increased between us, we saw him turn and go slowly up the side of the hill, followed by his immediate attendants ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... stomach on a stolen bird. He said nothing, only he reached his foul hand across the table and took up the dish containing the remnant of Chadron's breakfast. This he soon cleared up, when he rasped the back of his hand across his harsh mustache, like a vulture preening its filthy plumage, and leaned back ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... bird of them all was there but liked to have it done to him. And I do believe they would eat from her hand things unnatural to them, lest she should be grieved and hurt by not knowing what to do for them. One of them was a noble bird, such as I never had seen before, of very fine bright plumage, and larger than a missel-thrush. He was the hardest of all to please: and yet he tried to do his best. I have heard since then, from a man who knows all about birds, and beasts, and fishes, that he must have been a Norwegian bird, called in this country ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... anciently in great demand for stately entertainments. Sometimes it was made into a pie, at one end of which the head appeared above the crust in all its plumage, with the beak richly gilt; at the other end the tail was displayed. Such pies were served up at the solemn banquets of chivalry, when Knights-errant pledged themselves to undertake any perilous enterprise; whence came the ancient oath, used ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... As they were now first coming within enclosed grounds, after a long march in the wilderness, the augur was most anxious to inaugurate the expedition by some considerable omen. Watching anxiously, therefore, he soon saw a bird of splendid plumage perching on a low wall. 'Halt!' he said to the advanced guard: and all drew up in a line. At that moment of silence and expectation, Mosollam, slightly turning himself in his saddle, drew his bow-string to his ear; his Jewish hatred of Pagan auguries burned within him; his inevitable shaft went ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Nature playeth strange tricks sometimes, and here was one vastly strange and most unlovely!" After this we went on side by side and never a word betwixt us until we had reached that pleasant champain country where flowed the river shaded by goodly trees, in whose branches fluttered birds of a plumage marvellously coloured and diverse, and beneath which bloomed flowers as vivid; insomuch that my lady brake forth ever and anon into little soft cries of delighted wonder. And yet despite all these marvels it was long ere we shook off the evil ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... over on all sides, forming a shape like a parachute. Each leaf is full five yards in length, and of the kind called pinnate—that is divided into numerous leaflets, each of which is itself more than a foot and a half long, shaped like the blade of a rapier. Under the shadow of this graceful plumage the fruit is produced, just below the point where the leaves radiate from the stem. The fruit is a nut, about the size of a pigeon's egg, but of a regular oval form, and growing in large clusters, after the manner ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... imitations of Lancer caps, some had boots, some slippers, some spurs, others none; some had wondrous straps of tape and cord, others wore their trousers up to their knees; but one and all were entirely uniform in looking completely ill at ease and out of their element in their borrowed would-be-English plumage. Just as we had finished taking a general view of the army, the Maharajah appeared upon the stage, dressed in a green-and-gold embroidered gown and turban and tight silk pantaloons, mounted on a grey caparisoned Arab steed. After riding round the lines with his retinue, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... I saw over my head a dove, very different from those we usually see, for it had not the same plumage, but wings formed of small shells shining brightly. It was larger than an ordinary dove; I thought I heard the rustling of its wings. It hovered above me during the space of an Ave Maria. But such was the state ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... so, indeed; I supposed it was the owner of my borrowed plumage come to claim her own, angry perhaps because I had not returned it to her. I wondered whether she would scratch my eyes out because I had lost the cap—whether I could find it if I went to look with a light. None too ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... creatures which attract our admiration, or excite our fears, the greater part display their appetites, or develope their instincts, during the day time only; especially—with few exceptions—all those remarkable for beauty of plumage, and vocal melody. Predacious animals are chiefly distinguished for their nocturnal habits; and ideas of rapine, terror and blood, are ever associated with the tiger, the hyena, and the wolf. Among the feathered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... birds of Molly's feather. They wore Eastern, and not Western, plumage, and their song was a different song from that which the Bear Creek birds sang. To be sure, the piping of little George Taylor was full of hopeful interest; and many other strains, both striking and melodious, were lifted in Cattle ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... distorted, and too small; fourthly, the inside then becomes like a ham or any other dried meat. Ere long the insects claim it as their own, the feathers begin to drop off, and you have the hideous spectacle of death in ragged plumage. ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... in pursuit of a dove. Fluttering swiftly downward, the tiny bird escaped the claws of its pursuer and fell at the feet of the bishop. The kind priest picked it up carefully, and was tenderly smoothing its ruffled plumage when he saw a letter tied under its wing. Setting the trembling bird free, the bishop hastened to the tent where the princes were holding council. Godfrey broke the seal, and with an exclamation of surprise read the ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... plumage in Bewick's birds is the most masterly thing ever yet done in wood-cutting; it is worked just as Paul Veronese would have worked in wood, had he taken to it. His vignettes, though too coarse in execution, and vulgar ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... dark-lipped furrow breathes a dim delight Through the woodland's purple plumage to the diamond night. Aureoles of joy encircle every blade of grass Where the dew-fed creatures silent and enraptured pass. And the restless ploughman pauses, turns, and wondering, Deep beneath his rustic habit ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell
... account, and Stultz, the great Stultz, is defunct too, after achieving for himself a baronetcy as the prize of his peerless scissors, and founding a hospital here in Carlsruhe. Not to insult the shade of Stultz, I determined to renew my youth, at least in the matter of plumage. A shop of ready-made clothing afforded me lavender gloves, silk pocket handkerchief, satin cravat, detachable collar and a cambric shirt: the American dickey, in which some of my early sartorial triumphs were effected, is not to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... frequently discounted the good things which were to fall to Harry's lot. She was a dear, good, motherly woman, all whose geese were certainly counted to be swans. And of all swans Harry was the whitest; whereas, in purity of plumage, Mary, the eldest daughter, who had won the affections of the young Buntingford brewer, was the next. That Harry's allowance should be stopped would be almost as great a misfortune as though Mr. Thoroughbung were to break his neck out hunting with the Puckeridge hounds,—an amusement which, after ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... that we have a game-preserve. We keep quails, or try to, in the thickly wooded, bushed, and brushed ravine. This bird is a great favorite with us, dead or alive, on account of its tasteful plumage, its tender flesh, its domestic virtues, and its pleasant piping. Besides, although I appreciate toads and cows, and all that sort of thing, I like to have a game-preserve more in the English style. And we did. For in July, while the game-law was on, and the young quails were ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... lay for some days, surrounded by bum-boats filled with picturesque natives of all colours, chattering like parrots, and almost as gaudy in their plumage. Meanwhile the crew were hard at work replenishing the coal-bunkers, filling up wood and water, taking in fresh provisions, and effecting the necessary repairs after the late cruise. While thus employed, a visit was received from a Venezuelan, who in very good English represented himself ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... has an interesting anecdote of a sparrowhawk at Burton. "In May, 1844," he writes, "I received from Burton Park an adult male sparrowhawk in full breeding plumage, which had killed itself, or rather met its death, in a singular manner. The gardener was watering plants in the greenhouse, the door being open, when a blackbird dashed in suddenly, taking refuge between his legs, and at the same ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... champaign reached away to distant sapphire mountains, while the foreground was occupied by a magnificent house, resembling a large country villa, fronted with a garden, shaded by bowers and festoons of huge, brilliant flowers. Birds of radiant plumage flitted among the trees and blossoms, and then appeared a company of gayly attired people, including many young girls, who joined hands and danced in a ring, apparently with shouts of laughter, while a group of musicians standing near thrummed ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... the poor bird thus with eagerness strains, Nor regrets his torn wing while his freedom he gains: The loss of his plumage small time will restore, And once tried the false twig—it shall cheat him ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... tolerably large collection of northern birds, such as gulls, divers, molly-nochtes, and eider-ducks, which resemble ordinary ducks, with a white back and breast, a blue belly, the top of the head blue, the rest of the plumage white, shaded with different tints of green; many of them had already plucked from their bellies the eider-down, which both the male and the female devote to lining their nests. The doctor also saw great seals breathing at the surface of the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... like the savages on the earth today, seldom killed game unless they needed it for food. We, who think ourselves far better than they, now kill wild life for the pleasure of the chase. The professional hunter who seeks the glossy coats of the fur-bearing animals or the beautiful plumage of certain birds gives no thought to the wasted bodies ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... came crowding back! One of the earliest recollections of childhood was hearing the scream of the Meredith peacocks as they drew their gorgeous plumage across the silent summer lawns; at home they had nothing better than fussing guineas. She had never come nearer to one of those proud birds than handling a set of tail feathers which Mrs. Meredith had presented to her mother for a family fly brush. Pansy ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... said they break alone When poison writhes within. A foolish tale! What, you look pale? Caraffa, fetch a silver cup!... You own A Birth of Venus, now — or so I've heard, Lovely as the breast-plumage ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... certain barbaric luxuriance, in which tapestries woven and richly coloured, and secured with fastenings of gold, had their place. A remarkable industry and article of clothing of the early Mexicans was the beautiful feather-work, made of the plumage of the many-coloured birds, for which Mexico is famous. Surtouts of this feather-work were worn outside their military dresses, or armour, of ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... one," said Mrs. Lessingham, gratified, and rustling her plumage a little as a lady does when she is about to speak in confidence of something that pleases her. "Of course, I very soon understood that the ordinary surveillance and restrictions and moral theories were of little use in her case. (I may speak with you ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... of some rooster to break upon their babble and their laughter. The feathers amidst which they found themselves were of all sorts—turkey's feathers, long and black; goose quills, white and flexible; the downy plumage of ducks, soft like cotton wool; and the ruddy and mottled feathers of fowls, which at the faintest breath flew up in a cloud like a swarm of flies buzzing in the sun. And then in wintertime there was the purple plumage ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... best use of his time, His twig he'll so carefully lime That every bird Will come down at his word. Whatever its plumage and clime. He must learn that the thrill of a touch May mean little, or nothing, or much; It's an instrument rare, To be handled with care, And ought to be treated as such. It is purely a matter of skill, Which all may attain if they will: But every Jack, He must study the knack ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... He was cramped with sitting, and moved forward awkwardly, his footsteps leaving a track of dark irregular patches upon the damp grass. As he approached, the jackdaws flung themselves gleefully upward from the wall, the sun glinting on their glossy plumage as they circled and sailed away across the park. But the crow who had just begun work in earnest, stood his ground, notwithstanding the warning croak of his more timid mate. He grasped the horse's skull with his claws, and tore away greedily ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... though he was, and addicted to the chase, another kind of love found its way to his heart, making himself a captive. The dark eyes of a Paraguayan girl penetrated his breast, seeming brighter to him than the plumage of the gaudiest birds, or the wings ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... we ran along outside the line of islands which fringe the coast of Georgia, and which are devoted to the cultivation of "sea-island cotton." The water teemed with fish, and birds innumerable came flying round us. The most remarkable of the latter were the scissor-bills, with black plumage, which went skimming along the surface, scooping up with their long lower mandible any unwary mollusc or fish of small size which came within their reach, and uttering every instant loud and discordant cries. Lejoillie told us that they were ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... stone you, as village bumpkins run out and stone an odd stray bird that they have never seen before; and the more beautiful the plumage looks, the harder rain the stones. If the bird were a sparrow the bumpkins would let ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... looked blue-black, like the plumage of a crow, the eyes burning—two fires veiled as yet by melancholy. But the appearance of the man was not single, straight or obvious, as it is when I describe it—any more than his passions throughout the play were. I only ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... exhibited a belt curiously wrought and inlaid with porcupine-quills, the work of the savages, which especially drew forth the king's admiration. He also presented two specimens of the scarlet tanager, Pyranga rubra, a bird of great brilliancy of plumage and peculiar to this continent, and likewise the head of a gar-pike, a fish of singular characteristics, then known only in the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... traces of this early community of sex remain. The hen fowl retains in a rudimentary form the spurs which are so large and formidable in her lord, and sometimes she develops a capacity to crow, or puts on male plumage. Among mammals the male possesses useless nipples, which occasionally even develop into breasts, and the female possesses a clitoris, which is merely a rudimentary penis, and may also develop. The sexually inverted person does not usually possess any gross exaggeration of these ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the Navigator Isles brought us the little Psittacus australis, Columba australis, and another very prettily marked dove, having green plumage, ornamented with a dark violet line across the breast, and the feet and head of a reddish purple. It climbed about the sides and roof of its cage, did not leave its perch when it wanted to drink, but stooped down so low as merely to hang by its legs; it would not eat seed, but ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue |
