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Predatory   /prˈɛdətˌɔri/   Listen
Predatory

adjective
1.
Characterized by plundering or pillaging or marauding.  Synonyms: marauding, raiding.  "Predatory warfare" , "A raiding party"
2.
Living by preying on other animals especially by catching living prey.  Synonyms: rapacious, raptorial, ravening, vulturine, vulturous.  "The rapacious wolf" , "Raptorial birds" , "Ravening wolves" , "A vulturine taste for offal"
3.
Living by or given to victimizing others for personal gain.  Synonyms: predaceous, predacious.  "A predatory, insensate society in which innocence and decency can prove fatal" , "A predacious kind of animal--the early geological gangster"



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"Predatory" Quotes from Famous Books



... surrounded by powerful tribes of Indians, who are a source of constant terror and annoyance to the inhabitants. Separating into small predatory bands, and always mounted, they overrun the country, devastating farms, destroying crops, driving off whole herds of cattle, and occasionally murdering the inhabitants or carrying them into captivity. The great roads leading into the country are infested with them, whereby traveling ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson

... would shield and bear away up in her arms—as if Leonora were a hungry dog, trying to spring up at a lamb that she was carrying. Yes, she felt as if Edward's love were a precious lamb that she were bearing away from a cruel and predatory beast. For, at that time, Leonora appeared to her as a cruel and predatory beast. Leonora, Leonora with her hunger, with her cruelty had driven Edward to madness. He must be sheltered by his love for her ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... a violent hatred for him and for the small man, too. He always had hated the male of the American species. He looked on him as a disagreeable and alien creature; at his best a creature of predatory instincts who appropriated and monopolized all those things of power and beauty that belonged, properly speaking, to his betters; at his worst a defiler of the sacred wells, a murderer and mutilator of the language, of ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... because it is impossible for us now to raise an army capable of meeting him in the field: we must plunder [Footnote: Make predatory incursions, as Livy says, "popula bundi magis quam justo more belli." Jacobs: den Krieg als Freibeuter fahren. Another German: Streifzuge zu machen (guerilla warfare). Leland: "harass him with depredations." Wilson, an old English ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes

... his move? There was a French general the other day who proposed to march into this country and put it to sack and pillage, in revenge for humanity outraged by our conduct at Copenhagen: there is always some excuse for men of the aggressive turn. They are of their nature warlike, predatory, eager for fight, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... outbreak of the war. Turkey, through Enver, who had imported from the Fatherland a band of military "instructors" under Liman von Sanders, became the ame damnee of Germany. In Persia every warlike and predatory tribe was courted by the Teuton intruder, and the German mission at Teheran, as well as the Consulates in the chief towns of the Shahdom, became centres of agitation against Britain and Russia and branches of ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... of Serbia, never too stable, now rocked badly. King Milan declared that Pan-Slavism was the enemy of Serbia and he was certainly right. For in those days it would have simply meant complete domination by Russia—the great predatory power whose maw has never ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... Turcomans discovered my abilities as a barber and a surgeon, I became a general favourite, and gained the confidence of the chief of the tribe himself. Finally, he determined to permit me to accompany him on a predatory excursion into Persia—a permission which I hoped would lead to my escaping. I was the more ready to do so, in that I secretly possessed fifty ducats. These had been concealed by my master, Osman Aga, in his turban ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... himself off from the world, abjuring all social ties, and immolating the flesh in order to live by the spirit. Always Law had been, in the last resort, the Will of the Stronger, not the decree of impartial justice. Always the master-races, the predatory bands, the ruling castes, had expected to receive, and the mass of the people had been accustomed to give, the most abject submission; and these habits were difficult to overcome. 'In England,' says Sir Thomas Munro, 'the people resist oppression, ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... friend in the same village is better than sixteen influential brothers in the Royal Palace.' In all this illimitable Empire is there not room for one whose aspirations are bounded by the submerged walls of a predatory junk and another whose occupation is limited to the upper passes of the Chunling mountains? Consider the poignant nature of this person's vain regrets if by a couple of evilly directed blows you succeeded at this inopportune ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... Some may gradually become pastoral hordes, like those rude and migratory people, half shepherd, half warrior, who, with their flocks and herds, roam the plains of upper Asia; but others, it is to be apprehended, will become predatory bands, mounted on the fleet steeds of the prairies, with the open plains for their marauding grounds, and the mountains for their retreats and lurking places. There they may resemble those great hordes of the North, 'Gog and Magog with their bands,' that haunted the gloomy imaginations ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... the gun stations both officers and men watched keenly, silently, for the predatory Hun. At any moment the thin blackish-brown hulls of a raiding flotilla from the bases at Zeebrugge and Ostend might slide out of the blueness of the night. The beams of searchlights would momentarily cross and recross the intervening sea ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... little of the details of the various conflicts until Britain was finally won by these predatory tribes of barbarians. The stubborn resistance of the Britons led to their final retreat or complete extermination, and with their disappearance also perished what remained of the Roman civilization. The resistance of the Britons was much more ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... and eloquently advocated the claim of the Assembly. During the months of July and August, the Indians, satiated with the vast plunder of Braddock's camp, made no attempt to cross the Alleghanies, in predatory excursions against the more settled portions of Pennsylvania. But September and October ushered in scenes of horror and carnage, too awful to be depicted. Villages were laid in ashes, cottages were burned, families ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... that it was Saturday night—the predatory night of the week—had secured her pastry, her confitures, her celebrated desserts; and so poor Pinton, all his sweet teeth furiously aching, his mouth watering, stood on the hither side of Paradise, a baffled peri ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... unbearable maximum had to come in order to prepare the ripe way for a newer stage in civilization. The capitalist was an outgrowth of conditions as they existed both before, and during, his time. He fitted as appropriate a part in his time as the predatory ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... protested Everett. "I used the term in its most complimentary sense. It means a girl between fourteen and eighteen. It's English slang, and in England at the present the flapper is very popular. She is driving her sophisticated elder sister, who has been out two or three seasons, and the predatory married woman to the wall. To men of my years the flapper is really ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... uneasily over his shoulder. These still, stony valleys were peopled by the noiseless, predatory Ishmaels of the macquis. They were, it is true, not numerous at this time, but those who had escaped the clutch of the imperial law were necessarily the ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman

... prevails now. The problems that unrolled themselves before the nations afford useful points of comparison. The great enemy was then Napoleon and France. Napoleon's views of empire were precisely of that universal predatory type which we have learnt to associate with the Kaiser and the German Empire. The autocratic rule of the single personal will was weighing heavily on nearly every quarter of the globe. Then came ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney

... full height and flung out his long arms, his face turned to the southern skies. The movement shot panic into the heart of a swan that had drawn nearer with amiably predatory designs. Its consequent abrupt retreat collided it with a stout old lady, who squealed and dropped her bag of peanuts. Jones ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... say something, for the representatives of predatory wealth, of wealth accumulated on a giant scale by iniquity, by wrongdoing in many forms, by plain swindling, by oppressing wage-workers, by manipulating securities, by unfair and unwholesome competition and by stock-jobbing,—in short, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... On the contrary during enormous periods of time it deteriorates. Both progress and deterioration are of course purely human valuations. But according to our valuation of good and evil it may be said that during those epochs when the malicious, the predatory, the centripetal tendency in life predominates over the creative and centrifugal tendency, there is deterioration and degeneracy; and during the epochs when the latter overcomes the former there ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... Obviously, this is where the pickings come in. My grandfather started this paper on two hundred and fifty dollars, fifty dollars of which, I have heard, was his own. I could knock off for life as an idle member of the predatory classes, I suppose, but after all, I was made for an editor. In years past, I have, of course, had my offers from New York. Two of them were left open forever, and a little while ago, I telegraphed down and took the best. A grateful wire came in five minutes ahead of you. And that," he concluded ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... spent the rest of her days in saying, like Melisande, "I am not happy." She would have been an instrument of pleasure, a producer of children, a slaving drudge, while he went triumphantly about, a predatory ravisher, among the scattered Bulgarian peasantry. In fact, she expressed a whole-hearted detestation for her betrothed. I am pretty sure, too, that the death of her father did not leave in her life the aching gap that it might ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... offender against the law, has been so from the beginning and will be so to the end; that reform is impossible, for it is his trade, his caste—I may almost say his religion—to commit crime." It is not poverty which makes many of these predatory races criminals. Speaking of the Mina tribe inhabiting one of the frontier districts of the Punjab, Sir John Strachey says: "Their sole occupation is, and always has been, plunder in the native States and in distant parts of British ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... where I can escape them; though I travel to the ends of the earth, I find the same accursed system—I find that all the fair and noble impulses of humanity, the dreams of poets and the agonies of martyrs, are shackled and bound in the service of organized and predatory Greed! And therefore I cannot rest, I cannot be silent; therefore I cast aside comfort and happiness, health and good repute—and go out into the world and cry out the pain of my spirit! Therefore I am not to be silenced by poverty and sickness, not by hatred and obloquy, by threats and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... way that overflowed the eyes of the listener. A sparrow-hawk, fresh from his sixth victim, possibly recognizing in Mr. Hamlin a kindred spirit, stared at him in surprise, and was fain to confess the superiority of man. With a superior predatory capacity he ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... bally Socialist, Sir, and I'm ashymed to s'y 'as 'ow 'e's fond of abusin' 'is betters. Thet's 'ow it all come abaht, Sir. Alw'ys tykin' on over the rich, 'e is; and 'e's most fond of s'yin' wrong things abaht you special, Sir; callin' you a bloodsucking predatory person, Sir, and himpolite nimes like thet. 'Ah, stow thet, Jimmy!!' says I. 'All bloomin' lies, they are. There ayn't a finer man lives than Mr. Ellins,' says I. ''Ow do you know?' says 'e. ''Ow?' says I. 'Don't I wash 'is hoffice ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... Burkhardt's predatory band had been blotted out. Weir's thunderbolt had struck down into its very heart, ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... off on predatory excursions to get more land from somebody else, or to get more food from somebody else, ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... The 'predatory rich' (to use Mr. Stead's felicitous term) put their hands into our pockets because they know that, virtually, none of us will refuse to take their hands in our own afterwards, in friendly salutation. If notorious rascality entailed social outlawry ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... passing and a winter of famine before them. With his warriors he then returned to continue the contest. A few skirmishes and collisions took place along the line that now separates Wisconsin and Illinois, and predatory parties of Winnebagoes and Pottawatomi worked out their grudges and revenges on whites who had incurred their enmity. These outrages were numerous and were attributed to the Sauks, as their perpetrators expected would be the case. It is now believed that not a single case of the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... in appearance that it well deserves its vernacular name of Wolf, though now-a-days it is generally called Tiger. There is only one species, Thylacinus cynocephalus, and the settlers have nearly exterminated it, on account of its fierce predatory habits and the damage it inflicts on their flocks. The Tasmanian Government pays L1 for every one destroyed. The Van Diemen's Land Company in the North-West of the Island employs a man on one of its runs ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... from whom Maddalena had inherited her Eastern appearance. She reproduced, on a diminished scale, her father's outline of face, but that which was gentle, mysterious, and alluring in her, in him was informed with a rugged wildness. There was something bird-like and predatory in his boldly curving nose with its narrow nostrils, in his hard-lipped mouth, full of splendid teeth, in his sharp and pushing chin. His whole body, wide-shouldered and deep-chested, as befitted a man of the sea, looked savage and ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... fitted out. It suddenly appeared in the Thames, under the command of De Ruyter, and all England was thrown into consternation. The Dutch took Sheerness, and burned many ships of war; almost insulting the capital itself in their predatory incursion. Had the French power joined that of the Provinces at this time, and invaded England, the most fatal results to that kingdom might have taken place. But the alarm soon subsided with the disappearance ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... hold my peace.' A great awe fell on all who heard, and the king and multitudes of his people were converted. Shortly after this, Alla wedded Constance with great richness and solemnity. At length he was called to defend his border against the predatory Scots, and in his absence a man-child was born. A messenger was sent with the blissful tidings to the king's camp; but, on his way, the messenger turned aside to the dwelling of Donegild, the king's mother, and said, 'Be ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... mighty well," said, bluntly, Sir Geoffrey Gates, the leader of the mercenaries, a skilful soldier, but a predatory and lawless bravo; "but who is to pay me and ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... company of the regiment to Camp La Pena, about sixty or seventy miles east of Fort Duncan, in a section of country that had for some time past been subjected to raids by the Lipan and Comanche Indians. Our outpost at La Pena was intended as a protection against the predatory incursions of these savages, so almost constant scouting became a daily occupation. This enabled me soon to become familiar with and make maps of the surrounding country, and, through constant association with our Mexican ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan

... satisfy their needs. More effective than any moral house- cleaning in securing the tenure of an administration is its efficiency in promoting better living and working conditions, improving opportunities for recreation and education, or loosening the clutch of the predatory "interests." Moreover, the politician must be a good mixer, willing to work with those who do not share his idealism, good- natured and conciliatory, ready to postpone the accomplishment of much that he has at heart in order ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... mechanically deeper and deeper as the animal moves. That the porcupine can itself discharge them to some distance, is not true, but it is true that it can cause them to be easily detached; and this it does when rashly seized by any of the predatory animals. The result is, that these remarkable spines become fast in the tongue, jaws, and lips of the cougar, or any other creature which may make an attack on that seemingly unprotected little animal. The fisher (Mustela Canadensis) is said to be the only animal that can kill the porcupine ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... entangled among the bushes, and it was now secured so that they had no difficulty in laying hold of it. Had they not come upon the spot, it would have perished either by the suicidal act of half-strangulation, from thirst, or by the teeth of some fierce predatory animal. ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... days, I had been a wolf-hunter, but my occupations since then had been of another sort, chaining me to stool and desk. I was much in need of a change, and when a friend, who was also a ranch-owner on the Currumpaw, asked me to come to New Mexico and try if I could do anything with this predatory pack, I accepted the invitation and, eager to make the acquaintance of its king, was as soon as possible among the mesas of that region. I spent some time riding about to learn the country, and at intervals my guide would point to the skeleton of a cow to which the hide still adhered, and remark, ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... defined, the shark makes no distinction in favour of the ray when in pursuit of food. Indeed, certain members of the predatory family seem to delight chiefly in a diet of rays, and perhaps as a result of this persistent pursuit has the shape of the latter been evolved, since it enables them to take refuge in water so shallow that even a small shark would ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... new collective being with affection and hope, and be ready to follow it upon the path assigned to it by God. If they discover in it no signs of any noble inspiration, ruling moral conception, or potent future, they will learn to despise it, and to regard its territory as a new field for a predatory policy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... said, 'but they're born with predatory instincts. Their fathers made their living out of wrecks on this coast, and the children inherit a weakness for plunder. When Wangeroog lighthouse was built they petitioned the Government for compensation, in perfect good faith. The coast is well lighted now, and windfalls ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... group, only two, the honey-bee and the silkworm, have been won to man's use, and there is not another wild form which the naturalist can suggest as likely to prove a valuable captive. The only use which we are probably to find for these creatures is where, by some form of culture, we may induce predatory or parasitic species more effectively to do their destructive work on noxious forms of the class. So well fitted is this group for purposes of self-defence that however much man may interfere with the course ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... purchase with your entire manhood some supposed facility of spiritual contemplation and depth of insight into the Infinite, or if you intend to become a Brahmin, and seek in your navel the dyspeptic divinity who there wields his sceptre, while your despised body is given up to the predatory ravages of genus pediculus, well and good. Follow your hest, go on and conquer the [Greek: gnosis] and when you have got it, just inform me what it looks like, and whether you will be more able to make use of it than the fellow was of the elephant he bought at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... seize upon the vacant throne of Poland;—that he had numerous and powerful friends among the nobility;—that he had already drawn together his Lithuanians, under pretence of protecting the frontier from the incursion of predatory bands;—that he intended immediately to place himself at their head, and march towards Cracow. Now, if at this moment the throne should suddenly become vacant, what power on earth could prevent him from ascending it, and claiming the hand of his then ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... at Happiness! That know I, though the echoes of it wail, For one step upward on the crags you scale. Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust, Which means our soul asleep or body's lust, Until from warmth of many breasts, that beat A temperate common music, sunlike heat The happiness not predatory sheds! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... were more regular battles with the Indians fought on the soil of Ohio than in any other state of the Union. The defeat of General Harmer with 1,300 men, in 1790, in two battles in the Scioto valley, laid open to predatory warfare all the settlements in Ohio, and some in Kentucky. Every attempt at negotiations ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... Archibald Cameron is interesting. As the youngest son of old Lochiel, he, with his famous brother 'the gentle Lochiel,' set about reforming the predatory habits of their clan, with considerable success. Archibald went to Glasgow University, and read Moral Philosophy 'under the ingenious Dr. Hutchinson.' He studied Medicine in Edinburgh and in France; then settled in Lochaber, and married a lady of the clan of Campbell. ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... caution. These frequent defeats of the authorities of that day made him extremely popular with the people, who were always ready to afford him shelter and means of concealment, in return for which he assisted them with food, money, and the spoils of his predatory life. This, indeed, was the sagacious principle of the Irish Robbers and Rapparees from the beginning to rob from the rich and give to the ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... saw an enormous shoal of grampuses, large black fish, about 25 feet in length, something between a dolphin and a whale, with the very ugliest jaws, or rather snouts, imaginable. They are of a predatory and ferocious disposition, attacking not only sharks, dolphins, and porpoises, but even whales, more than twice their own size. We also passed through enormous quantities of flying-fish, no doubt driven to the surface by dolphins ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... of the Huns themselves were not adequate to their power and prosperity. Their victorious hordes had spread from the Volga to the Danube; but the public force was exhausted by the discord of independent chieftains; their valor was idly consumed in obscure and predatory excursions; and they often degraded their national dignity, by condescending, for the hopes of spoil, to enlist under the banners of their fugitive enemies. In the reign of Attila, [1] the Huns again became the terror ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... orchard after night-fall. No, the burnished golden pippins that peeped through the leaves in the western rays of evening, and made the mouths of the Ballyfermot school-boys water, glowed undisturbed in the morning sunbeams, and secure in the mysterious tutelage of the night smiled coyly on their predatory longings. And this was no fanciful reserve and avoidance. Mick Daly, when he had the orchard, used to sleep in the loft over the kitchen; and he swore that within five or six weeks, while he lodged there, he twice saw the same thing, and that was a lady in a hood and a loose dress, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... to exterminate a species of any of the vertebrate animals. There are probably millions of people who do not realize that civilized (!) man is the most persistently and wickedly wasteful of all the predatory animals. The lions, the tigers, the bears, the eagles and hawks, serpents, and the fish-eating fishes, all live by destroying life; but they kill only what they think they can consume. If something is by chance left over, it goes to satisfy the hunger of the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... Despite the discomfort and worry incidental to such conditions, she was quite happy. The natives as a whole were hostile to white people; they wanted neither them nor their religion; but there was nothing martial or predatory about "Ma," and her very helplessness protected her. And there was that in her blood which made her face the conflict with zest; it always braced her to meet the dark forces of hell, and conquer them with the simple ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... pebbles. The canoes went wallowing and plunging up the narrow channel, between thick banks of alders, like clumsy sea-monsters. All the grace with which they move under the strokes of the paddle, in large waters, was gone. They looked uncouth and predatory, like a pair of seals that I once saw swimming far up the river Ristigouche in chase of fish. From the bow of each canoe the landing-net stuck out as a symbol of destruction—after the fashion of the Dutch admiral who nailed a broom to his masthead. But it would have been impossible to sweep ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... confined to the hotter regions of the globe, and formidable from their vast strength and mode of attack. They lurk in ambush and dart upon their victim, which in an instant is seized and enveloped in their folds, and crushed to death or strangled. For their predatory habits they are admirably adapted; their teeth are terrible, and produce a dreadful wound; the neck is slender, the body increasing gradually to about the middle in diameter, and then decreasing. The tail is a grasping instrument, strongly prehensile, ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty

... many of his trips, she had absorbed from him, as well as from the forest, a thousand observations of plant and animal life. Seemingly she had nothing of the woman's fear of the wilderness, she scarcely acknowledged any awe of it. Of the bears, and other predatory ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland

... cultivated, would be very insufficient for the maintenance of so large an army. Besides, many of the youth were drawn off from the cultivation of the fields, and engaged in the war; and a custom also prevailed among the people of that nation, grafted on a naturally depraved inclination, of carrying on a predatory kind of warfare. Nor did he receive any supplies from home, where they were anxious about the retention of Spain, as if every thing was going on prosperously in Italy. In Spain the state of affairs was in one respect similar, but in another ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... with such extraordinary vigour, that other nations believed an expedition was intended against the corsairs of Algiers, who had for some time grievously infested the trade and coasts of the Mediterranean. The existence of this and other predatory republics, which entirely subsist upon piracy and rapine, petty states of barbarous ruffians, maintained as it were in the midst of powerful nations, which they insult with impunity, and of which they ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... which are to be surmounted in acquiring a naval superiority—the hostile temper of many of the surrounding Indian tribes towards these states, and above all the uncertainty whether the enemy will not persevere in their system of harassing and distressing our sea-coast and frontiers by a predatory war. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall

... broke out in Italy; and the English and other predatory troops contributed much to spread its ravages. It extended to many places; but most of ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... only reason for staying, they could have left long ago and had nothing to fear, as they have been for many years at peace with their ancient enemy the predatory Navajo. But rather than go they have chosen to remain in their old home where they have always lived, and will continue to live so long as they are left ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... Ammianus (xiv. 4) gives a lively description of the wandering and predatory life of the Saracens, who stretched from the confines of Assyria to the cataracts of the Nile. It appears from the adventures of Malchus, which Jerom has related in so entertaining a manner, that the high road between Beraea and Edessa was infested by these robbers. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... thus clearly defined, we may regard the warfare carried on by Bertrand du Poiet and Louis of Bavaria in the interests of Church and Empire, the splendid campaigns of Egidio d'Albornoz, and the delirious cruelty of Robert of Geneva, no less than the predatory excursions of Charles IV., as episodical. The main profits of those convulsions, which drowned Italy in blood during nearly all the fourteenth century, accrued to the Despots, who held their ground in spite of all attempts to dispossess them. The greater houses, notably the Visconti, acquired ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... Libyans and Mashauash (Maxyes) in a land attack upon Egypt in the days of Meneptah, the successor of Ramses II—just as in the later days of the XXVIth Dynasty the Northern pirates visited the African shore of the Mediterranean, and in alliance with the predatory Libyans attacked Egypt. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... were opened with Alain, who, it is said, was at first unwilling, but in the end won over to consent. Navarre had need of the friendship of the King of France, that it might withstand the predatory humours of Castille; and so, for his son's sake, Alain could not long oppose the wishes of Louis. Considering closely the pecuniary difficulties under which this Alain d'Albret was labouring and his notorious avarice, one is tempted ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... a time, Dixon. You have missed the grandeur of van Manderpootz's concept. See here, this creature, imperfect as it is, represents the predatory machine. It is the mechanical parallel of the tiger, lurking in its jungle to leap on living prey. This monster's jungle is the city; its prey is the unwary machine that follows the ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... she should scream, and, possibly, even faint. Again and again during the day following their unexpected meeting the woman reproached herself for not having killed him as she would ja or jato or any other predatory beast that menaced her existence or her safety. There was no attempt at self-justification for these sinister reflections—they needed no justification. The standards by which the acts of such as you or I ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... of Caliban by Prospero. The French were resolute, powerful, and rapacious, and treated the red men with inhumanity. The Indians, unable to contend with their oppressors by open force, fled to their mountain fastnesses, and commenced an obstinate predatory warfare upon the whites, murdering without discrimination all whom they found defenceless. This led to a bloody and protracted struggle for the mastery; and a reenforcement of troops having been sent from France to aid the infant colony, it ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... by your valiant hand Taken and kept entire, more praise has shed On you, than if the predatory band Had routed by your single valour bled, Of all who flocked to fat Ravenna's land, Or masterless, without a banner fled, Of Arragon, Castile, or of Navarre; When vain was ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... they are pleased to call their own. But those who have little to call their own, and much that they would like, prefer strong government if they can control it; and the strength of government has steadily grown with popular control. This is due to more than a predatory instinct; it is natural, and excusable enough, that people should be reluctant to maintain what is no affair of theirs; but even staunch Conservatives have been known to pay Radical taxes with comparative cheerfulness when their ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... in support of these contentions; for now that the Directory threw away the scabbard, England felt the need of the stout Bretons, whose armies had become mere predatory bands. The last predictions of Burke were therefore justified. That once mighty intellect expended its last flickering powers in undignified gibes at the expense of Pitt and his regicide peace. Fate denied to him the privilege of seeing Malmesbury ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... not a rope nor an oar remained on board her; she was only a derelict, heavy and water-logged, drifting before the waves. Some fishermen hastily put off in their little boats to salvage their booty, but, seeing men alive and ready to defend their property, they changed their predatory designs ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... of different sorts and predatory individuals have their representatives on the field at Washington to ward off attack by any means that brains can devise or money procure and to obtain desired favors at a cost that will leave a profitable balance for the ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise

... staring windows of the houses near; it is too late for letters, too early for a book. In town your fancy would turn to the theatres; in the country you would occupy yourself with cares of poultry or of stock: in the suburbs you can but sit upon your threshold, and fight the predatory mosquito. ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... solution to follow out everywhere a programme of violence. Not even the predatory animals do that. Tigers do not savage their cubs; hawks do not pluck hawks' eyes; and dogs ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... the knight and the mountaineer proceed toward the Lowland frontier. A dispute arises concerning the character of Roderick Dhu, and the knight expresses his desire to meet in person and do vengeance upon the predatory chief. 'Have then thy wish!' answers his guide; and gives a loud whistle. A whole legion of armed men start up from their mountain ambush in the heath; while the chief turns proudly and says, 'I am Roderick Dhu!' Sir Roderick then by a signal dismisses his men to their concealment. Arrived ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... twenty-one days there," said the skipper, "and not an effort has been made to raise it yet, and not even a warning light is hung over it at night"—was to sight a bottle-nosed whale puffing and spewing its predatory course. ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... maintained a show of independent authority over the other great Maratha chieftains, Sindhia, Holkar, and the Raja of Nagpur or Berar. But the real military power of the Marathas rested with these leaders, and their predatory troops of horsemen terrorised all Central India. Happily for Wellesley's purpose, they were often at feud with each other, and the Peshwa, though aided by Sindhia, was utterly defeated by Jaswant Rao Holkar. He fled to Bassein near Bombay, where, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... through rush beds and mangrove swamps, frequently up to the hips in mud and water. On emerging upon the dry ground near Cobolo the report of fire-arms was heard in front, and scouts being thrown forward, it was learned that the Kossoos, which tribe had suffered most from the predatory propensities of the rebels, had taken up arms and were then engaged in attacking Cobolo. The troops at once pushed on, and a few minutes after their arrival on the scene, the Acoos, completely routed, fled in all directions, ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis

... to advance with care. Beneath the trees the darkness was now so complete that it had that peculiar quality of density which everyday speech likens to a wall. Cats, gamekeepers, poachers, and other creatures of predatory and nocturnal habits can find and follow a definite track under such conditions; but detectives are nearly human, and Furneaux was compelled to use the torch more than once. He ran no risk in doing this. Hilton Fenley could not yet be in ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... for the deliverance of their leader. Every man in Segna, whether young or old, all who could wield a cimeter or clutch a knife, hastily armed themselves, and crowded into the fleet of long light skiffs in which they were wont to make their predatory excursions. Then breaking furiously through the line of Venetian ships, stationed between Veglia and the mainland, and which were totally unprepared for this sudden and daring manoeuvre, they disappeared amidst the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... Williamsport, and still keep a safe line of retreat open to Washington. This might not be so great a misfortune to the enemy as regards food and forage; for he could probably live on the country for some time, by making predatory excursions in different directions, but when it came to obtaining fresh supplies of ammunition, the matter would become very serious. An army only carries a limited amount of this into the field and must ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday

... woman to renounce her home and friends, in the description you have just given of your condition, that I hardly know how to refuse your request, Barnstable. You are very tolerably provided with a dwelling in the ruin; and I suppose certain predatory schemes are to be adopted to make it habitable! St. Ruth is certainly well supplied with the necessary articles, but whether we should not be shortly removed to the Castle at York, or the jail at Newcastle, is a question that I put ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... forming the most treacherous deadly serpent that ever inhabited earth, they moved eastward until they reached the bank of the swift little river; then turned north, leaving the abandoned, desolated settlement, the ruined cornfields, as tokens of their handiwork, as a message to other predatory bands who might follow, as a challenge to the white man who they knew would return. As passed the slow hours toward morning they moved swiftly and more swiftly. The gliding walk became a dog trot, almost a lope; their arms ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... transition to arrest and concealment, attack and reprisal, expulsion, theft, house- burning, capture, and murder. From these, again, sprang barricaded and fortified dwellings, camps and scouting parties, finally culminating in roving guerrilla bands, half partisan, half predatory. Their distinctive characters, however, display one broad and unfailing difference. The free-State men clung to their prairie towns and prairie ravines with all the obstinacy and courage of true defenders of their homes and firesides. The pro-slavery parties, unmistakable aliens and invaders, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... was a tory, and by that means became acquainted with our Indians, when they were in the neighborhood of his native place, desolating the settlements on the Susquehannah. In those predatory battles, he joined them, and (as I have often heard the Indians say,) for cruelty was not exceeded by any of ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver

... infested the lower part of Monmouth County, whence they went on predatory excursions into other parts of the State, coming upon the people at night to burn, murder, plunder, and destroy. They burrowed caves in the sandhills on the borders of the swamps, where they concealed themselves and ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley

... was tall and graceful he hurried to avoid her, but before long could but note that she was walking parallel and turning her face towards him. Her gloved hand seemed to make a beckoning movement, and perceiving at once that he was the object of that predatory instinct which he knew from the many letters and protests in his journals to be one of the most distressing features of the War, he would have broken into a run if he had not been travelling up-hill; being deprived of this means of escape, his public nature ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... living. He had won his inherited chance by sheer luck of contest through millions of years while his forebears came up from the slime and the cave. The little hunted creature, shrieking out there in the wood in the clutch of a predatory enemy was not so lucky. It was the enemy who was lucky to-night, but to-morrow night the enemy himself might go down under longer claws and be torn by fangs stronger than his own. And God had made it so. And God did ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... in rolling up the leaves is not only to conceal themselves from birds and predatory insects, but also to protect themselves from the cuckoo-flies, which lie in wait in every quarter to deposit their eggs in their bodies, that their progeny may devour them. Their mode of concealment, however, though it appear to be cunningly contrived and skilfully executed, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various

... accomplished adventurer, the professional thief, there was something else, the lust, or even the sensual love, of the primitive man. Perhaps—she realized the possibility—he believed he had found in her the great opportunity of his life, the unique chance of combining the satisfaction of his predatory instincts with the satisfaction of his intimate personal desires, those desire which he shared with the men who ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... domestic animals brought to the Colony, in the first few years of its settlement, were turned out in the woods to fend for themselves. The original breeding stocks were of ordinary quality and the lack of care given them contributed to their inferiority. Predatory animals such as wolves, bears, panthers and wild cats exacted a heavy annual toll ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier

... living on it excepting a couple of bats and the seals (so-called sea lions, sea elephants, and others) which frequent its coasts. There were 180 species of birds, and many of these quite peculiar to the island. Many of the birds showed in the absence of any predatory enemies—there being no carnivorous quadrupeds to hunt them or their young—a tendency to lose the power of flight, and some had done so altogether. The gigantic, wingless Moas—allied to the ostrich and the cassawary—had grown up there, and were the masters of the situation. There were ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... advanced, even the rude Goths inhabiting Moesia and Thrace were partially brought under its influence. The circumstances which led to the conversion of these barbarians are somewhat remarkable. On the occasion of one of their predatory incursions into the Empire, they carried away captive some Christian presbyters; but the parties thus unexpectedly reduced to bondage did not neglect the duties of their spiritual calling, and commended their cause so successfully ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... nothing to eat; provision must be found by foraging. If they were captured on these predatory expeditions, they were roughly beaten. A Spartiate boy who had stolen a little fox and had hidden it under his mantle, rather than betray himself let the animal gnaw out his vitals. They were to learn how to escape from ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... second largest town in the colony would be in their hands. From all sides came tales of plundered farms and broken households. Some at least of the raiders behaved with wanton brutality. Smashed pianos, shattered pictures, slaughtered stock, and vile inscriptions, all exhibit a predatory and violent side to the paradoxical Boer character. [Footnote: More than once I have heard the farmers in the Free State acknowledge that the ruin which had come upon them was a just retribution for ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of rock in the southern part of Palestine. Here the Edomites dug out their homes in the solid rock, and so fortified themselves that they were the Gibraltar of ancient times. From these mountain fastnesses they made predatory incursions upon their neighbors, and for ages easily repelled all efforts at reprisal. And so they came intolerably insolent, and feared neither God nor man. But one day Jeremiah prophesied of them: 'Thy terribleness hath deceived ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... action of that impulse to defined circumstances is wanting. Much, too, of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to a simple want of imagination which prevents us from adequately realising the sufferings of others. The predatory, envious and ferocious feelings that disturb mankind operate unrestrained through the animal world, though man's superior intelligence gives his desires a special character and a greatly increased scope, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... his head, and for once the scent of gain did not rouse his predatory appetite. He was wondering how it should never have occurred to him before that the scared little white-faced thing might have fallen into kindly hands, and been nursed and cockered up and made a lady of? He was puzzled to account for her remembering the name that had belonged to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... network of trails and runways covered the grasslands, made by the cavies and other of the smaller animals that kept to the dense cover and used also by the predatory animals that preyed on them. There were large birds also among the denizens of this underworld; one, somewhat resembling a turkey in size and shape but of gray color with bright red legs, was encountered frequently. But it always disappeared so silently that it ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... manuscripts was one, whose author had been up to our globe, in which history of his travels he had described several of its kingdoms, particularly those of Europe. The Tanaquites had seized this manuscript during one of their predatory excursions into a distant land; but as the author had concealed his name, they knew not what countryman he was, nor in what manner he had passed up through the earth. The quaint title of this book was: "Tanian's[2] Travels Above-ground; being a description of the ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg

... Ages the nobles of Rhineland were mostly notorious for their wild savagery and predatory habits, and thus the modern traveller on the famous river, admiring the many picturesque castles built on summits overlooking its banks, is prone to think of these places as having been the homes ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... engaged in many more wars than those in Central Asia. On the side of Burmah he found his borders disturbed by nomad and predatory tribes not less than in the region of Gobi. These clans had long been a source of annoyance and anxiety to the viceroy of Yunnan, but the weakness of the courts of Ava and Pegu, who stood behind these frontagers, had prevented the local grievance ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... government and manners of the Arabians before the time of Mahomet, we have few and imperfect accounts; but from the remotest ages they led the same unsettled and predatory life which they do at this day, dispersed in hordes, and dwelling under tents. It was not to those wild and wandering tribes that the superb Palmyra owed its rise and grandeur, though situated in the midst of their deserts, where it ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... for so long a time between Mexico and Texas has since the battle of San Jacinto consisted for the most part of predatory incursions, which, while they have been attended with much of suffering to individuals and have kept the borders of the two countries in a state of constant alarm, have failed to approach to any definitive result. Mexico has fitted out no formidable armament ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... from the ravages of the foreigner only because they possess a naval and military force that overawes him, yet serenely leaving the protection of that military force, and placing life and property alike within the absolute power of that very foreigner against whose predatory tendencies we ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Buckbee, and Whitney H. Stoddard was so astounded that he was compelled to unmask. His cold, weary eyes became predatory and eager and a subtle, scornful smile twisted his lips. Even Rimrock was surprised, but he leaned back easily and gave her a swift, approving smile. She was with him, that was enough; let the stock gamblers rage. He had won in ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... attacked the Normans in the isle of Oiselle: after a long and obstinate resistance, they were obliged to capitulate; and having paid 6000 pounds of gold and silver, by way of ransom, had leave to join their victors. The riches thus acquired rendered a predatory life so popular, that the pirates were continually increasing in number, so that under a "sea-king" called Eric, they made a descent in the Elbe and the Weser, pillaged Hamburg, penetrated far into Germany, and after gaining two battles, retreated with immense ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... same relation to each other as the two scales of a balance: when the one rises the other must fall. The balance is so sensitive that it indicates momentary influences. For example, in the beginning of this century the predatory excursions of French robbers under their leader Buonaparte, and the great efforts that were requisite to drive them out and to punish them, had led to a temporary neglect of science, and in consequence to a certain decrease in the ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... their hindquarters and their fore against one another, of cleaning their bodies under the wings, of extending their forelegs over their heads and grooming themselves, and of flying out of the window again to return with other predatory squadrons. Indeed, so dazed was Chichikov that scarcely did he realise that the Governor was taking him by the arm and presenting him to his (the Governor's) lady. Yet the newly-arrived guest kept his ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... for social purposes isn't of any more use than a razor purchased for a like use. An education which merely fits a person to prey on society, and occasionally slash it up, is a predatory preparation for a life of uselessness, and closes no prison. Rather it opens a prison and takes captive at least one man. The only education that makes free is the one that tends to human efficiency. Teach children to work, play, laugh, fletcherize, study, think, and yet again, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... everywhere. Having reached the frontiers of the empire, in the country of the Amorites, they came to a halt, and constructing an entrenched camp, installed within it their women and the booty they had acquired. Some of their predatory bands, having ravaged the Bekaa, ended by attacking the subjects of the Pharaoh himself, and their chiefs dreamed of an invasion of Egypt. Ramses, informed of their design by the despatches of his officers and vassals, resolved ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... neighbor may have made on my unguarded heart was immediately dispelled. Thus subtly and vigilantly my house-keeper kept the outer gates of the citadel, and shooed away a possible mistress as effectually as she dispersed the predatory hens ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field

... groups of girls, who retorted with shrill cries and shrieks of laughter; amorous couples strolled, arm in arm, oblivious, as though the place were as empty as Eden; lady-killers with exaggerated square shoulders, wearing bright neckties, their predatory instincts alert, hovered about in eager search of adventure. There were men-killers, too, usually to be found in pairs, in startling costumes they had been persuaded were the latest Paris models,—imitations of French ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... set behind the distant mountains of Liddesdale, when a few of the scattered and terrified inhabitants of the village of Hersildoun, which had four days before been burned by a predatory band of English Borderers, were now busied in repairing their ruined dwellings. One high tower in the centre of the village alone exhibited no appearance of devastation. It was surrounded with court walls, and the outer ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... uncouth a solitude, and you find it difficult to accept the theory that this has only been of value as a guard-house to the richer country down below, and that these frequent cities have been so many fortresses to hold off the wild and predatory men of the south. But whatever be their explanation, be it a fierce neighbour, or be it a climatic change, there they stand, these grim and silent cities, and up on the hills you can see the graves ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... powdered her masses of dark, neatly coiled hair. The action revealed her keen, cleanly cut features, so strongly resembling her brother's. But the resemblance was softened by femininity; for young McCrae's visage was masculine and hawklike, and under excitement fierce, even predatory; while his sister's, apart from sex, was more refined, more thoughtful, with a ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... of relentless hostilities, lasting the span of a full-grown generation, had cultivated the predatory instinct of all men with the temperament of action, and seemed to justify it. Venturesome, hot-spirited youths, with their way to make in the world (who in a former age might have been reduced to "the road") took up privateering on a systematic scale. In ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... to, and twenty-two times in that section of the second part, Plates I* to X*, relating to bees. He also appears to take an active part in the manufacture of idols, engages in painting, aids in the culture or gathering of cacao, engages in predatory excursions, and acts in various other relations. In the left compartment of Plate XXIV*a he bears on his head the head of a bird. In the remarkable double plate (41-42) of the Cortesian Codex he is twice figured, in the central area and at the east (top), and in each case ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas

... committee, truly devoted to freshman welfare, was blissfully unaware that their duties were about to be snatched from them by the predatory Sans. The absent members of the committee having arrived, the seven girls held a meeting on Thursday evening in Marjorie's room, dividing the trains to be met among them. Marjorie and Jerry were to be reinforced ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... (while the crew were clearing and baiting their spillets) in the vague hope of getting a shot at these predatory birds, of whose spoliations we had heard so much on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various

... though the very small ones may be made to stand inside of an upright piece of bamboo. Some kapatongs are placed in the ladang to protect the crops, others in the storehouse or inside the baskets where rice or food is kept. The monkey, itself very predatory on the rice fields, is converted into an efficient watchman in the form of its image, which is considered an excellent guardian of boiled rice that may be kept over from ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... which cover the ground three feet deep, and have a peculiarly malignant influence on European constitutions. In three days twelve men were on the sick-list; the natives, as they saw the strength of the expedition decline, became more bold and frequent in their predatory attacks. At Gambia attempts were made to overpower by main force the whole party, and seize all they possessed; but, by merely presenting their muskets, the assault was repelled without bloodshed. At Mania Korro the whole population hung on ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... to lose lambs, and a close watch was set, with the result that iguanas, which are very numerous in this part of the country, were discovered to be the murderers of the little "baa-baa's." The cause of this new departure in the predatory habits of the "goanner"—which hitherto had confined his evil deeds to nocturnal visits to the fowl-yards—is stated to be the extermination of the opossum, which has driven the cunning reptile to seek for another source of food. And, as before the shooting of kangaroos, ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... buffalo ranged always within touch, great bands of elk now appeared, antelope always were in sight. The streams abounded in noble game fish, and the lesser life of the open was threaded across continually by the presence of the great predatory animals—the grizzly, the gray wolf, even an occasional mountain lion. The guarding of the cattle herds now required continual exertion, and if any weak or crippled draft animal fell out its bones were clean within the hour. The feeling of the wilderness now was distinct enough for the ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... is sweet. Of all the party that lay thus buried in sleep, on the verge of the Great Desert, exposed at any moment to an assault from its ruthless and predatory occupants, but one bethought him of the danger; though he was, in truth, so little exposed as to have rendered it of less moment to himself than to most of the others, had he not been the possessor of a fancy that served oftener ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... the results of his past night's toil had been—how many tramps he had gathered in and what the chances were for convicting them. And so it was, when later, as a tramp, I succeeded in eluding some predatory constable, I could not but feel sorry for the little boys and girls at home in that constable's house; it seemed to me in a way that I was defrauding those little boys and girls of some of the good ...
— The Road • Jack London

... of the force, men of Athens, is determined by the fact that we cannot at present provide an army capable of meeting Philip in the open field; we must make plundering forays, and our warfare must at first be of a predatory nature. Consequently the force must not be over-big—we could then neither pay nor feed it—any more than it must be wholly insignificant. {24} The presence of citizens in the force that sails I require for the following reasons. I am told that Athens once maintained a mercenary force ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes

... adopted, which may be roughly summarised under the three heads of surprise, violence and the hunt. Frequently all three were combined; but as in the case of gangs operating on the waters of rivers or harbours, the essential element in all pre-arranged raids, attacks and predatory expeditions was the first-named element, surprise. In this respect the gangsmen were genuine "Peep-o'-Day Boys." The siege of Brighton is a ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson



Words linked to "Predatory" :   acquisitive, vulturine, offensive, aggressive



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