|
|
|
More "Beak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon this pillared rock, Prey to the vulture of a vast desire That feeds upon my life. I burst my bands And steal a moment's freedom from the beak, The clinging talons and the shadowing plumes; Then comes the false enchantress, with her song; "Thou wouldst not lay thy forehead in the dust Like the base herd that feeds and breeds and dies! Lo, the fair garlands that I weave for thee, Unchanging ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... at last, and well-nigh staked herself on the heron's beak! But we had a long ride, and were well-nigh at the Tyne before we had caught her. Full of pranks, but a noble hawk, as I shall write to my brother by the next messenger that comes our way. I call it a hawk worth her meat that ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nice an' proper fer me to drop in an' eat with you—THE LAST TIME!" replied the cowboy. His drawl was slow and cool, his tone was friendly and pleasant. But his look was that of a falcon ready to drive deep its beak. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... on that side of its unfortunate victim, a big, agile, vigorous Nubian, habituated to ostriches in their haunts. And, if the leg misses its mark, as it very seldom does, the bird, as it hurls past its enemy, pecks viciously at his face, its sturdy beak being capable of inflicting a serious wound wherever it strikes, and often destroying ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... older writers see vols. v. 122; vi. 16-49. I may remind the reader that the O. Egyptian "Rokh," or "Rukh," by some written "Rekhit," whose ideograph is a monstrous bird with one claw raised, also denotes pure wise Spirits, the Magi, &c. I know a man who derives from it our "rook" beak and parson. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... vivacity, his whole countenance, in fact, lighting up with the animation of intense interest,—"an old man tall and raw-boned, a scar on his nose and cheek, a halt in his gait, his left middle-finger short of a joint, and a buzzard's beak and talons tied to his hair?—It is Wenonga, the Black-Vulture. Truly, little Peter! thee is but a dolt and a dog, that thee told me ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... agitation Buck broke another spoke from the crumbling wheel. The parrot cracked his beak against the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... fluttering her wings and yawning. "When the coop blew away from the ship I clung fast to this corner, with claws and beak, for I knew if I fell into the water I'd surely be drowned. Indeed, I nearly drowned, as it was, with all that water washing over me. I never was so wet before ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... stop at the squirrel's house," said the pigeon, as they stopped at an old tree. "Rap-tap-rap" with his beak on a knot-hole in the trunk, and a fat squirrel opened the door. What a lot of chattering! he was inviting them to enter. "How delightful," thought Laurie as they stepped inside, "now I shall see what a squirrel's house is ...
— The Pigeon Tale • Virginia Bennett
... look at early this morning. I had never before seen alive one of these national types of yours, and stood entranced as the noble creature swept, like a black cloud, over the river, his bald white head bent forward and shining in the sun, and his fierce eyes and beak directed towards one of the beautiful wild ducks on the water, which he had evidently marked for his prey. The poor little duck, who was not ambitious of such a glorification, dived, and the eagle hovered above the spot. After a short interval, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... passionate nature, there was one great weakness; the love and admiration of women was a necessity to him. He could no more help trying to make women love him, than the kingfisher can help thrusting down his beak when the bright speckled sides of his prey flash through the water. It was from neither cruelty nor vanity, for Thorne had less of both traits than usually falls to the lot of men; it was rather from the restlessness, the yearning of a strong nature for that which it needed, but had not yet ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... up out of it the most loathsome-looking creature I have ever seen: a huge, crawling, red shape that was like a blood-red spider, with the eyes, the hooked beak, and the writhing tentacles of an octopus. It made no sound, but it seemed to know her, to understand her, for when she waved her hand toward the open door of her own room, obeying that gesture, it dragged its huge bulk over the threshold, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... incomprehensible manner. With one accord, Doctor and Piper, Bear and Policeman, Face-maker and Bird, were rubbing hard at the palm of one hand. There being no trees close by, the men used the sole of a shoe, while Puffy raked away at one paw with the claws of the others, and the Bird pecked a foot with his beak. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... back to the open French window of the pretty salon, angrily oblivious of the blue waters of Lac Leman which lapped placidly against the stone edges of the quai below. He was a tall, fierce-looking old man, with choleric blue eyes and an aristocratic beak of a nose that jutted out above a bristling grey moustache. A single eyeglass dangled from a broad, black ribbon round his neck. "One of the old school" was written all over him—one of the old, autocratic school which believed that "a man should be master in his own house, b'gad!" ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... when freshly killed, have supple feet. If young, the windpipe and beak can be easily broken by pressure of the thumb and forefinger. Young birds also have soft, white fat, tender skin, yellow feet, and ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... a Bird of Prey, Who on her slaughtering skyey way, Beak-striketh and claw-clutcheth. But Ladies who own not her sway, Will you not lift white hands to stay The shameless slaughter which to-day ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... whispered, rubbing his hooked grey beak with one finger, and chuckling low and wheezily: "Now, maybe! Me fine young Papist! Ye'll be getting your tay in a mug! Hot and ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the same direction, rose a staff of deep blue, to which was attached a drooping silver flag crossed with bars of gold. (Its pattern was like the one placed in his grave.) On the top of the staff rested a dove, holding in its beak a wreath, composed of rainbow shades, circling the word Peace in letters whiter than snow. As the new sun continued to rise, the jewelled sky increased in dazzling brilliancy, ten thousand gems of shining gold shot out, and ten thousand sapphires ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... fault, or what his crime? Or what ill planet crossed his prime? Heart too soft and will too weak To front the fate that crouches near,— Dove beneath the vulture's beak;— Will song dissuade the thirsty spear? Dragged from his mother's arms and breast, Displaced, disfurnished here, His wistful toil to do his best Chilled by a ribald jeer. Great men in the Senate sate, Sage and hero, side by ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Emile, laughing; "plain Valentin, say you? Raphael DE Valentin, if you please. We bear an eagle or, on a field sable, with a silver crown, beak and claws gules, and a fine motto: NON CECIDIT ANIMUS. We are no foundling child, but a descendant of the Emperor Valens, of the stock of the Valentinois, founders of the cities of Valence in France, and Valencia in Spain, rightful ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... cocked his head on one side, and eyed the tempting morsel. Buttered toast did not often come his way. He dropped down on to the balcony floor, hopped over to the toast, pecked at it, picked it up in his strong beak, and flew with it to the roof of the building opposite. In silence the two ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... control. On Thracia's hills the Lord of War Has curb'd the fury of his car And dropt his thirsty lance at thy command. Perching on the sceptred hand Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather'd king With ruffled plumes, and flagging wing: Quench'd in dark clouds of slumber lie The terror of his beak, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... pluck a few feathers from the under part of the leg; if the skin is not discolored the bird is fresh. The age may be known by placing the thumb into the beak, and holding the bird up with the jaw apart; if it breaks it is young; if not, it is old, and requires longer keeping before ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... oolitic T. tetraedra, and that the varieties amongst them are such as are found in that variable species. Generally speaking, the American specimens of T. aenigma may be distinguished from the British T. tetraedra, by the surface having the ribs sharp and well-defined to the beak, whilst in the British species they become obsolete and smoothed down; but this difference is not constant. Professor Forbes adds, that, possibly, internal characters may exist, which would distinguish the American species from ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... never die. Have done; have done; show the sharp beak of the eagle where it is to devour my entrails. But hear me ... No, hear nothing; ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... opinion that a squadron of seven-hundred-ton vessels with beaks could best defend a harbor from ironclads; and in support of this contention he cited an experience of his own as showing the efficiency of the beak in naval warfare. A few years before he had anchored in the Piraeus, his ship, an ironclad, having a beak projecting from the bow, of course under water. Noticing a Greek brig nearing him, he made signals to her to keep well off; but the captain of the brig, resenting ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... close for James Batter, who, being a member of the fifteenpence a-quarter subscription book-club, had read a power of all sorts of things, sacred and profane. James, as he was humming it over with his specs on his beak, gave now and then a thump on his thigh, "Prime, prime, man; fine, prime, good, capital!" and so on, which astonished me much, kenning who had written it—a callant that had sleeped with our Benjie, and could not have shaped a pair of leggins ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... knaw, an' I think it wad just suit oor Sam, An' my missus, she's just o' my mind, for she says that he's nea use at yam. It was nobbut this mornin' I sent him to gan an' to harrow some land, He was boamin'(7) asleep upo' d' fauf,(8) wiva rubbishly beak iv his hand; I gav him a bunch(9) wi' my feat, an' rattled him yarmin'(10) off yam. Sea I think that I'll send him to you, you mun mak a skealmaisther o' Sam. He's a stiff an' a runty(1) young fellow, I think that' he'll grow up a whopper, ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... there are certainly more than a hundred well-marked races. The most noteworthy of these races are, the four great stocks known to the "fancy" as tumblers, pouters, carriers, and fantails; birds which not only differ most singularly in size, colour, and habits, but in the form of the beak and of the skull: in the proportions of the beak to the skull; in the number of tail-feathers; in the absolute and relative size of the feet; in the presence or absence of the uropygial gland; in the number of vertebrae in the back; in short, ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... some time before, for the hand of the spoiler had been near their dwelling, and its fragments lay scattered on the ground. He presently learnt to notice that he never heard the sharp sound of the bird's tapping beak among the woods without ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... how little and naked he was, and how he shivered, so they did not throw sticks at him, but allowed him to creep close. He watched his chance, and when they were not looking he picked up a red-hot coal in his beak and flew back home with it as fast as ever he could—and that is how fire came to ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... in thunder; his celestial breath Was sulphurous to smell. The holy eagle Stoop'd, as to foot us. His ascension is More sweet than our blest fields. His royal bird Prunes the immortal wing and cloys his beak, As when ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... bird, with his little red beak?" said the artist. "When our dear Lord hung bleeding, and no man pitied him, this bird, filled with tender love, tried to draw out the nails with his poor little beak,—so much better were the birds than we hard-hearted sinners!—hence he hath honor in many pictures. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... of all you have done; Only think of all you can do; A false note is really fun From such a bird as you! Lift up your proud little crest, Open your musical beak; Other birds have to do their best, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... took the little girl, flew to the loghouse, knocked with his beak a hole in the window-pane of stretched bladder, laid the infant in the arms of the Viking's wife, then flew to his mate, and unburdened his mind to her; while the little ones listened attentively, for they were old ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... another which was engaged in pursuit, if it had fallen into an opposite current, turning itself away as if for flight. And when actually engaged, one ship while bearing down upon another with its beak directed against it, assuming an oblique position itself, received a stroke from the beak of the other; while another which lay with its side exposed to the enemy, receiving a sudden impulse, was turned round so as to present its prow. While the triremes were thus engaged in ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... will not be acknown, sir; why, 'tis wise. Thus do all gamesters, at all games, dissemble: No man will seem to win. [exeunt corvino and corbaccio.] —Here comes my vulture, Heaving his beak up in ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... formation includes (like that of Java) three regions—the central volcanic, the southern peninsula of Tertiary limestone, and alluvial plains between the older formations. The highest volcanoes, Tabanan, Batur and Gunung Agung (Bali Beak), have respectively heights of 7545 ft., 7383 ft., and 10,497 ft., the central chain having an average altitude of 3282 ft. As regards flora and fauna Bali is associated with Java. The deep strait which separates it on the east ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... away from the mid-gallery, and instead, three gradated series of birds put down the length of it (or half the length—or a quarter would do it—with judgment), showing the transition, in length of beak, from bunting to woodcock—in length of leg, from swift to stilted plover—and in length of wing, from auk to frigate-bird; the wings, all opened, in one specimen of each bird to their full sweep, and in another, shown at the limit of the down back stroke. For what on earth—or in ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... merrily, in order to make it known that he had something nice to invite to, and as two neat grey-speckled hens sprang towards him, he let first one grain of corn and then another fall out of his beak, of which, agreeably to a clever hen-instinct, they availed themselves without ceremony or compliments. How ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... and to send them away to plot His death. That is what comes of making religion a round of outward observances. The Pharisee is always blind as an owl to the light of God and true goodness; keen-sighted as a hawk for trivial breaches of his cobweb regulations, and cruel as a vulture to tear with beak and claw. The race is not extinct. We all carry one inside us, and need God's help ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... by anybody that wears pants, and when Pa sidled up to her and began talking about what a great work the christian wimmen of the land were doing in educating the heathen, she felt real good, and then she noticed Pa's posey in his button-hole and she touched it, and then she reached over her beak to smell of it. Pa he squeezed the bulb, and about half a teacupful of water struck her right in the nose, and some went into her strangle place, and O, my, ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... he did not know Shacabac of the cleft lips, and the loquacious barber, and the little hunchback of Casgar, just as when he was out walking he used to look about for the black woodpecker which bears in its beak the magic root of the treasure-seeker, so Canaan and the Promised Land became in his childish imagination certain regions in Burgundy or Berrichon. A round hill in the country, with a little tree, like ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... beside them a big bird of a most beautiful blue color. At first they were a bit frightened, for the newcomer seemed of giant size beside their little lark bodies, and he was, moreover, quite fierce in appearance, having a crest of feathers that came to a point above his head, and a strong beak and sharp talons. But Twinkle looked full into the shrewd, bright eye, and found it good humored and twinkling; so she plucked up courage ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... fore-mast, and hooked on to the reef-cringle of the fore-top-sail. The birds did not move at our approach, and one old red-eyed vulture snapped on the polished bill of the boat-hook, leaving the marks of his beak in the smooth iron. Down in the clear green depths, too, the water was alive with ravenous fish, and we could see at times hundreds of them with their heads fastened on to some dark object, rolling it, and biting it, and pulling every ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... rusty black iron, was gathering cobwebs in disuse. All this lay within Mary Louise's field of vision from the summerhouse and yet she saw it not. She was staring abstractedly at a wary robin that had stopped to rest on a fence post, his beak all frowzy with the debris from a recent drilling. The McCallum house—her father's—stood at the other end of the row of maples on the same side of the street as the meeting house and a hundred yards or so distant. There was quite an expanse of greening ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... answer presented itself. His thin, eagle face was puckered with perplexity. The sleepy eyes gleamed vengefully from between his half-closed eyelids as he gazed across the sunlit prairie. His aquiline nose, always bearing a resemblance to an eagle's beak, was rendered even more like that aristocratic proboscis by reason of the down-drawn tip, consequent upon the odd pursing of his tightly-compressed lips. For the moment "Lord" Bill was at a loss. And, oddly ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... in Newbern, but with ill success. When you got 'em learned a little about the game they acted like a lot of sissies over a broken nose or a couple of front teeth out or something. What he wanted was lads that would get the beak straightened, pretty near as good as new, or proper gold ones put in, and come back looking for more trouble. Wilbur Cowan alone ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... self-enclosed, excited philosopher, but "that most skilful breeder, Sir John Sebright, who used to say, with respect to pigeons, that he would produce any given feathers in three years, but it would take him six years to obtain a head and a beak". I am not saying that the new thought is better than the old; it is no business of mine to say anything about that; I only wish to bring home to the mind, as nothing but instances can bring it home, how matter-of-fact, how petty, as it would at first sight ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... thick-besprent, of every sort and size: Here a Bahaman-spider's carcass lies, There a dire serpent's golden skin doth shine; Here Indian feathers, fruits, and glittering flies; There gums and amber found beneath the line, The beak of Ibis ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... around the neck and clutched him like a vise, shutting off his last, startled squawk. Then Cap'n Kidd darted forward that knobby head with its ugly beak, and tore off Peter's caput ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... substances, though they are commonly simple apprehensions, and the names of them simple terms, yet in effect are complex and compounded. Thus the idea which an Englishman signifies by the name swan, is white colour, long neck, red beak, black legs, and whole feet, and all these of a certain size, with a power of swimming in the water, and making a certain kind of noise, and perhaps, to a man who has long observed this kind of birds, some other properties: which all terminate in sensible simple ideas, all ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... and sunny day The Crows to one-another say, "CAW! CAW! our nests now let us build." Away they fly: each beak is fill'd With little sticks of beechen wood, With which they build their houses good: When all is done, with joy they see The work ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM
... on me heel, and me beak's begun to peel; I've an ache for every bone that's in me back. I've a feeling I could eat rubber hose and call it sweet, And me hands is warped ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... beautiful bird, with plumage of the finest shining blue, with purple beak and legs, the natural and living ornament of the temples and palaces of the Greeks and Romans, which, from the stateliness of its part, as well as the brilliancy of its colors, has obtained ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... to her, for the sunbonnet overhanging the meek potato-flowers like a flamingo's beak rose in air, as she stood erect, or as nearly erect as she ever stood nowadays. She tossed a few uprooted weeds over the lilac-hedge, and, clumping up the steps of the porch, slumped into a chair. Chairs had once been her luxury, too. She carried ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... marvellous adaptations of anatomical structure, the provisions for the flight of birds, and for the movements of fishes; with instances of arrangements to suit particular conditions—the long neck of the swan, the minute eye of the mole, the beak of the parrot, the sting of the bee—all furnishing an ever accumulating body of irrefutable evidence to attest the existence and operation of an intelligent Author ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... parting message to the earth, a great bird hovered motionless. It seemed to hang in air as if by a thread. Then it descended with a wide, circling swoop. In less than ten seconds, as it seemed to Hervey, its body and great wings, and even its curved, cruel beak, were plainly visible circling a few yards above the tree. It seemed like a journey from the heavens to the ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a sea-bird [172] with a black beak, the upper part slightly aquiline, four inches long and in the form of a lancet; namely, the lower part representing the handle and the upper the blade, which is thin, sharp on both sides, and shorter by a third than the other, which circumference is a matter of astonishment ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... report, like that of a blunderbuss going off. This was accompanied by the flourish of a brightly coloured pocket-handkerchief, whose vivid hue approximated closely to the general tint of his cheeks and eagle-like beak, and which he held loosely, ready for action, in his disengaged left hand; for, his right was ever at work oscillating between the magazine of snuff in his deep waistcoat pocket and the nasal promontory that consumed it with almost rhythmical regularity, sniff and snort and resonant ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... rooster escaped from the old man's hands it ran off down the high-road. While thus pursuing its way, lo and behold! it found a little purse with two half-pennies. Taking it in its beak, the bird turned and went back toward the old man's house. On the road it met a carriage containing a gentleman and several ladies. The gentleman looked at the rooster, saw a purse in its bill, ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... Picus of Mirandola, the writer of his Life, that he had himself seen the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove more than once, sitting on Savonarola's shoulder, fluttering his feathers, which were sprinkled with silver and gold, and, putting his beak to his ear, whispering to him his divine suggestions. The prior besides relates in a book of his own composition at great length a dialogue that he held with the devil, appearing like, and having been mistaken by the writer ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... eagle's nest: and thro' the tree Rush'd ever a rainy wind, and thro' the wind Pierced ever a child's cry: and crag and tree Scaling, Sir Lancelot from the perilous nest, This ruby necklace thrice around her neck, And all unscarr'd from beak or talon, brought A maiden babe; which Arthur pitying took, Then gave it to his Queen to rear: the Queen But coldly acquiescing, in her white arms Received, and after loved it tenderly, And named it Nestling; so forgot herself A moment, and her ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... chance," said Dason, and knelt and offered his neck to the axe. So Tob cut off his head, sticking it on the galley's beak as an advertisement of what had been done. The body he threw over the side, and one of the great man-eating birds that hovered near, picked it up and flew away with it to its nest amongst the crags. And so we were free to get a meal ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... something for William, even if it was only going into a convent—to be bricked up alive, perhaps. And then I hears a scratch, scratch, scratching, and 'Drat the mice,' says I; but I didn't take any notice, and then there was a little tap, tapping, like a bird would make with its beak on the window-pane, and I went and opened it, thinking it was a bird that had lost its way and was coming foolish-like, as they will, to the light. So I drew the curtain and opened the window, ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... bring earth with them, so that there will always be more of it as my hole becomes deeper by degrees. And plenty of withered leaves fall on my poor maimed top. I also positively believe that I have an earth-worm up there. How he got there, I don't know: perhaps a bird dropped him out of his beak. But he draws the leaves down into the earth and eats them and turns them into mould. So I say, like the elder-bush, it will ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... one turned, from every direction came the note of the golden oriole and the shrill cry of the hoopoe and the red-legged falcon. At any other time I should have begun chasing dragon-flies or throwing stones at a crow which was sitting on a low mound under an aspen-tree, with his blunt beak turned away; but at that moment I was in no mood for mischief. My heart was throbbing, and I felt a cold sinking at my stomach; I was preparing myself to confront a gentleman with epaulettes, with a naked sword, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... never tiring, With its beak it doth not cease, From the cross it would free the Saviour, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... give as regards the way in which wild animals readily become domesticated, and eventually seem to prefer the society of man to that of their own species. In this case my pet was a hornbill, a bird of discordant note, and with a huge beak, and a box-like crowned head. This creature was also totally unrestrained, but showed a most decided preference for the society of man. One day it joined some of its species which made their appearance in the ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... even as regards their other studies at the University, for I will prepare the practical exercises in a double series, one illustrative of history, the other of natural science. And whether you are drawing a piece of Greek armour, or a hawk's beak, or a lion's paw, you will find that the mere necessity of using the hand compels attention to circumstances which would otherwise have escaped notice, and fastens them in the memory without farther effort. But were it even otherwise, and this practical ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... work, chaffing gaily with his principal actor as to the rendering of some of his lines. Then there was Fardell, also a schoolfellow, now a police magistrate, full of dry and pleasant humour, called by his intimates "The Beak "; Amberson, poseur and dilettante thirty years ago, but always a good fellow, now an acknowledged master of English prose and a critic whose word was unquestioned. These men, one and all, seemed to be up to the neck in life, kept young and human by the taste of it upon ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of most species are comparatively short, and the head is small so that they are often hardly noticeable when the body is distended. The sucking beak which is thrust into the host when the tick is feeding is furnished with many strong recurved teeth which hold on so firmly that when one attempts to pull the tick away the head is often torn from the body and left ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... vulture curse That hovers o'er the universe, With ready talons quick to strike In every human heart alike, And cruel beak to stab and tear In virtue's vitals everywhere,— You need no sympathy of mine To aid you, for a strength divine Encircles you, and lifts you clear Above this ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... outward form of the ibis is this:—it is a deep black all over, and has legs like those of a crane and a very curved beak, and in size it is about equal to a rail: this is the appearance of the black kind which fight with the serpents, but of those which most crowd round men's feet (for there are two several kinds of ibises) the ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... robin was so tired and frightened, that it lay on the ground, panting, with its feathers ruffled, and its beak wide open, and its eyes half closed. It seemed ready to die. Then the rude, cruel boys pulled the string to make ...
— The Nursery, October 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 4 • Various
... it happened, was only a few yards away. He came up eagerly, a slim, dark man with keen gray eyes and a nose like a hawk's beak. ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... fowl between a stork and a swan—a melancholy water-fowl brought from Astracan by the Russian ambassador." This writer tells us, "It was diverting to see how the pelican would toss up and turn a flat fish, plaice or flounder, to get it right into its gullet at its lower beak, which being filmy stretches to a prodigious wideness when it devours a great fish. Here was also a small water-fowl, not bigger than a more-hen, that went almost quite erect like the penguin of America. It would eate as much fish as its whole ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... face in the shadow of the newspaper a tall, lean young man entered the dressing-room with a swaggering gait. His melancholy eyes were deeply sunken above a nose like a crow's beak; his mouth was set in a petrified grin. The Adam's apple of his long throat made a deep shadow on his stock. He was dressed as a ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... case, although, I confess, she looked like it. In a few seconds she put down her head and opened her mouth, into which the young one thrust its beak and seemed to suck something from her throat. Then the cackling was renewed, the sucking continued, and so the operation of feeding was carried on till the young one was satisfied; but what she fed her little one with we could ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... said Mary Acton. "Do you remember the young one we found last spring, sprawling all over the nest, and opening its huge, gaping beak?" ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... we saw several dolphins and bonnettas about the ship, and the next day some straggling birds, which were brown on the back and the upper part of their wings, and white on the rest of the body, with a short beak, and a short pointed tail. The variation was now decreased to 4 deg. 43' E. our latitude was 24 deg. 30' S. our longitude 97 deg. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... and hour was she arrested?" said the man, thrusting his beak-like nose closer to Armand's face. Evidently the piece of silver had done its work well; he meant to be ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... touch. If the body feels warm after sleep, unlike their own dew-cooled skins, it soon becomes a corpse. They advance with two long knives, generally matchets, one held between the teeth. They prefer the white arm because 'guns miss fire, but swords are like the chicken's beak, that never fails to hit the grain.' Some 250 of these desperadoes lately drove off 5,000 of the semi-civilised recreants and took about 560 prisoners, including the 'King' of ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... the roc had settled and that I was once again upon solid ground, I hastily unbound my turban from its foot and freed myself, and that not a moment too soon; for the bird, pouncing upon a huge snake, killed it with a few blows from its powerful beak, and seizing it up rose into the air once more and soon disappeared from my view. When I had looked about me I began to doubt if I had gained anything by ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... naked and chubby body, played a great part in these pictures. To one of them, the title of which was "Saffron and the Rainbow," was appended the explanation, "The effect of this is great." Opposite another, which represented "A Stork, flying with a violet in its beak," stood this motto, "To thee they are all known;" and "Cupid, and a bear licking its cub," was styled "Little by Little." Fedia used to pore over these pictures. He was familiar with them all even to their minutest details. Some of them—it was always the same ones—made ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... a burst of feeling, "they say the American eagle might keep her beak shut with advantage, more than she does; but I tell you," and the Senator's hand came down hard on Dicky's knee, "a trip around Europe is enough to turn her into a singing ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... below. A woodpecker on a fir tree raps lightly and flies farther on and vanishes; it has hidden, but does not cease to tap with its beak, like a child when it has hidden and wishes to be sought for. Nearer sits a squirrel, holding a nut in its paws and gnawing it; its tail hangs over its eyes like the plume over a cuirassier's helmet: even though thus protected, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Marat was exactly five feet high, and his weight when at his best was one hundred twenty pounds—just the weight of Shakespeare. Jean Paul had a nose like the beak of a hawk, an eye like an eagle, a mouth that matched his nose, and a chin that argued trouble. Not only did he have red hair, but Carlyle ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... a cure for thirst: the bark, Tender and juicy, of the bough. Thy beak, a very needle, stabs it. Mark The narrow passage welling now; The sugared stream is flowing, thee beside, Who drinkest of the flood, the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... our visitor was a surprise to me, since I had expected a typical country practitioner. He was a very tall, thin man, with a long nose like a beak, which jutted out between two keen, gray eyes, set closely together and sparkling brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He was clad in a professional but rather slovenly fashion, for his frock-coat was dingy and ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... then no man can say. There was just one furious mix-up of whirling, powdered snow, that hung in the air like a mist, out of which a great pinion, a clawing paw, a snapping beak, a flash of fangs, a skinny leg and clutching, talons, a circling bushy tail appeared and vanished in flashes, to the accompaniment of stupendous flappings and abominably ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... above mentioned, to the order of the Lizards. In this singular reptile (fig. 151) the skull is somewhat bird-like, and the jaws appear to have been destitute of teeth, and to have been encased in a horny sheath like the beak of a Turtle or a Bird. It is possible, however, that the palate ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... made a companion as another man might of a dog. Even now he noted with a sort of pride that broken-winged and shattered though she was, her talons remained fixed in the back of the quarry, and her beak through the neck. ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... himself, and retreating to the chartroom, pulled the door to with a crash. There, his brows knitted, his mouth drawn on one side in sardonic meditation, he sat through many still hours—a sort of Prometheus in the bonds of unholy desire, having his very vitals torn by the beak and claws of ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... is to the west-north-west-half-north, and we will have to answer him! There are animals that speak! Well, why should not a dog do as much if he took it into his head? It is more difficult to talk with a beak than ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... for the fresh wind made the pennons cut strange capers. The winged lion of Venice looked as if trying to fly away home; the Chinese dragon appeared to brandish his forked tail as he clawed at the Burmese peacock; the double-headed eagle of Russia pecked at the Turkish crescent with one beak, while the other seemed to be screaming to the English royal beast, "Come on and lend a paw." In the hurry of hoisting the Siamese elephant got turned upside down, and now danced gayly on his head, with the stars and ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... the chimney and away to the wood. Rap! rap! rap! you can hear her tapping her beak on the tree-trunks as she hunts for food. But always and everywhere, she wears a black coat and a little red cap. Watch for the woodpecker and see if ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... a confused screaming and crying, and every one according to his usual note, but not one of them of any kind that I knew. As for the creature I killed, I took it to be a kind of hawk, its colour and beak resembling it, but it had no talons or claws more than common. Its flesh was ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... but little more difficult; a rod extends from the beak to the tail, and is crossed by another which extends from tip to tip of the wings. The rods being lashed together, a small thread is drawn from the place of the head of the eagle, to the two extremities of the wings, and thence ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... of life, and of frightful shape and features, the principal god being in a tent-like shrine, which permits only a glimpse of his grim features in the background. On his right hand is the figure of a man with the beak of an eagle, and on his left a very grotesque divinity, with a third eye, like that of the Cyclops, in the centre of his forehead. These two figures, again, are supported by gigantic guardians, one on either side, who have nothing absolutely monstrous about them, being ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... what a delight! To have something that nobody else had—something all his own. As the traveling-cloak traveled on, he little heeded where, and the lark still stayed, nestled down in his bosom, hopped from his hand to his shoulder, and kissed him with its dainty beak, as if it loved him, Prince Dolor forgot all his grief, ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... see nothing but the clouds and sky. I heard a noise just over my head like the clapping of wings, and then began to perceive the woful condition I was in, that some eagle had got the ring of my box in his beak, with an intent to let it fall on a rock like a tortoise in a shell, and then pick out my body and devour it; for the sagacity and smell of this bird enabled him to discover his quarry[86] at a great distance, though better concealed ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... with Jack and a pipe to keep off the Tory mosquitos, while I fell to reading the letter. The same buzzing Tories were busy about me also with bugle and beak, but when, as I glanced at the letter, I caught Darthea's name on the second page, I forgot them and hesitated. "Still," thought I, "others have read it, and it may be well that I should do so." It was no longer private. I went on to learn what it said. It was from Miss Franks ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... overpowering effect on him. It was sung confoundedly well, too. The band came in with a wild, trailing strain, that was positively heart-breaking. The party just mentioned was, as I said, old, and a gentleman, but he was tall, robust, broad-shouldered, with eagle-like beak, and keen gray eyes that were fitting accompaniments to so distinguished a feature. His dress was rather careless, but his air and the expression of his face evinced a mixture of eccentricity and a sense of superiority. At least, it had evinced this until the singing of Tara. Then he ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... exact counterpart of her brother. Soon after her confinement, Francesca had a vision which impressed her with the belief that God would one day claim this child as His own. She saw a dove of dazzling whiteness, bearing in its beak a tiny lighted taper, enter the room; and after making two or three circles in the air, it stooped over Agnese's cradle, touched her brow and limbs with the taper, gently fluttered its wings, and flew away. Looking upon this as a sign that the little ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... manifest life. Where are they—all the dying, all the dead, of the populous woods? Where do they hide their little last hours, where are they buried? Where is the violence concealed? Under what gay custom and decent habit? You may see, it is true, an earth-worm in a robin's beak, and may hear a thrush breaking a snail's shell; but these little things are, as it were, passed by with a kind of twinkle for apology, as by a well-bred man who does openly some little solecism which is too slight for direct mention, ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... faithful ally of Great Britain, the Catholic king, that we address our doleful lamentation: it is not to the Prince of Peace, whose declaration of war was one of the first auspicious omens of general tranquillity, which our dove-like ambassador, with the olive-branch in his beak, was saluted with at his entrance into the ark of clean birds ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... woke, to find he had cried the words aloud. He sat up in bed. A white pigeon was on the sill outside his window, tapping with its beak ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... her, she means, poor soul!" soliliquized the dame. "It is but little you know my gay master if you think he values a promise made to any woman, except to deceive her! I have seen too many birds of that feather not to know a hawk, from beak to claw. When I was the Charming Josephine I took the measure of men's professions, and never was deceived but once. Men's promises are big as clouds, and as empty ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... The gas-jet puffed and whinnied, Charlie's voice dropped almost to a whisper, and he told a tale of the sailing of an open galley to Furdurstrandi, of sunsets on the open sea, seen under the curve of the one sail evening after evening when the galley's beak was notched into the centre of the sinking disc, and "we sailed by that for we had no other guide," quoth Charlie. He spoke of a landing on an island and explorations in its woods, where the crew killed three men whom they found asleep under the pines. Their ghosts, Charlie ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... posterity, omitting nothing which either his art could demonstrate, or any mans judgment think worthy of being known. After an exact survey of the whole frame, he found the extreme length, from the beak head to the stern, where a lantern was erected, 165 feet. The breadth, in the second close deck, of which she had three, but this the broadest, was 46 feet 10 inches. At her departure from Cochin ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... a motive that goes far and explains much. The haps and mishaps of the hungry make up natural history. The eye of the eagle is developed that it may see its prey from afar, its wings are strong that it may pounce upon it, its beak and talons are sharpened that it may tear it in pieces. By right of these superiorities, the eagle ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... bird, would willingly and kindly aid him. Wondrous to relate, the bird not only kept the place it had once taken, but as often as the encounter was renewed, raising itself on its wings, it attacked the face and eyes of the foe with its beak and talons, until Valerius slays him, terrified at the sight of such a prodigy, and confounded both in his vision and understanding. The crow soaring out of sight makes towards the east. Hitherto the advanced guards on both sides remained ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... Solomon Owl had not tried more than once to catch Grumpy Weasel perhaps Mr. Crow's retort wouldn't have made him feel so uncomfortable. And muttering that he wished when people spoke of his beak they wouldn't call it a bill, and that Mr. Crow was too stupid to talk to, Solomon ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... three equal vertical bands of green (hoist side), white, and red; the coat of arms (an eagle perched on a cactus with a snake in its beak) is centered in ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... he had learned to sing perfectly, not with the low distant-sounding note but with open beak and clear brilliant little roulades and trills. He grew prouder and prouder. When he saw I was busy he would tilt on a nearby bough and call me with flirtatious, provocative outbreaking of song. He knew that ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Synod had met at Dordtrecht. The great John Bogerman, with fierce, handsome face, beak and eye of a bird of prey, and a deluge of curly brown beard reaching to his waist, took his seat as president. Short work was made with the Armenians. They and their five Points were soon thrust out into ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with awful speed the monster seized the largest and most gaily decorated plane in his hundred-foot tentacles just as the Skylark came within sighting distance. In four practically simultaneous movements Seaton sighted the attractor at the ugly beak, released all its power, pointed the main bar of the Skylark directly upward, and advanced his speed lever. There was a crash of rending metal as the thing was torn loose from the plane and jerked a hundred miles into the air, struggling so savagely ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... a vaguely lonesome feeling somewhere in the region of his heart. He went on past the entrance of the San Francisco Stock Exchange and almost collided with a bent-over, shrewd-faced man, whose eagle-beak and penetrating eyes were a ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... most odd and interesting bird on the American continent except the emperor penguin. Its beak baffles description, its long legs and webbed feet are a joke, its nesting habits are amazing, and its food habits the despair of most zoological-garden keepers. Millions of flamingos inhabit the shores of a number ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... twenty-nine days, when they hoped to reach Timor. That afternoon some noddies came so near the boat that one was caught. These birds are about the size of a small pigeon; it was divided into eighteen parts and given by lot. The men were much amused when they saw the beak and claws fall to the lot of the captain. The bird was eaten, bones and all, with bread and ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... while ye fly, That if you nibble, click,{1} or clye,{2} My sight's so dim, I cannot see, Unless while you the blunt{3} tip me: Then stay, then stay; For I shall make this music speak,{4} And bring you up before the Beak,{5} ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... while the flames of the pyre were still blazing brilliantly I utilised their light to enable me to strip the pelt off the great carcase. When the fire had entirely died down, and I had satisfied myself that there was nothing left of poor Ama to be desecrated by fang of beast or beak of bird, I sorrowfully retired from the fatal spot, carrying the leopard's skin with me, and making my way with some difficulty to the place where the canoe lay concealed, ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... head gently three times with his silver wand. Elsie felt immediately that she was changed into a bird. Her arms became wings, and her legs became eagle's legs with long claws, and her nose became a curved beak, while feathers covered her whole body. Then she rose up suddenly into the air, and soared away below the clouds like an eagle hatched from the egg. She flew southwards thus for several days, and would gladly have ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... forces, and the ironclad now set out to render assistance. The wooden gunboats Miami and Southfield offered just the sort of targets the monster fancied. Under a full head of steam, the Albemarle rammed her iron beak clean into the fire room of the Southfield. The latter was skewered upon the projection and began slowly sinking. The snout was so entangled with the Southfield that the victim could not be shaken off, and as she sank she carried her foe with her. The bow of the ironclad dipped below the ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... mirror hung over it, with a gilt eagle a-top, holding in his beak the knot of blue ribbon that tied up a curtain of muslin falling on either side of the table, where appeared little ivory-handled brushes, two slender silver candle-sticks, a porcelain match-box, several pretty trays for small matters, and, most imposing of all, a plump blue silk cushion, coquettishly ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... plied the ferry; and then men would speak of him as the Red Boatman. But he could not be depended on, for he was often absent. His boat was of a curious shape, not like any other boat seen on the Arun. Its prow was curved like a bird's beak. And when folk wished to go across to the Amberley flats that lie under the splendid shell which was once a castle, Harding would carry them, if he was there and neither too busy nor too surly. And ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... by external compulsion. They may have the appearance of being vaguely purposive, although we would never attribute purpose to the creature making them. The infant that cries and struggles, when tormented by the intrusive pin, the worm writhing in the beak of a bird,—these act blindly, but it does not appear meaningless to say that they act. The impulse ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... must it have been which could have forced the poor, hunted wanderers of the wilderness to fly for refuge and protection from the talons and beak of the eagle to the claws and teeth of the lion. It was but a change, and made with but little hope of its being for the better. None saw this more clearly, felt it more deeply, than the sagacious Tecumseh; and his proud ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... evening from that time forward, just about sunset, a little bird with plumage gay, called "The Kingfisher," might be seen to haunt the margin of the lake, ready, with its pointed beak, to hook up the tiny fishes, that glided in shoals at nightfall near the surface ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... do not long escape being caught, though they fly beautifully. Miss J—— had a cockatoo which amused her and the little girls during sewing-class. He was a beautiful bird with a rosy crest, but extremely mischievous. To sharpen his beak he notched all the Venetian shutters in the verandahs; and if he spied a looking-glass, flew at it in a rage and broke it: fortunately there were no large mirrors in the house. These birds look very pretty perching in the trees, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... fed them well, let them to their Kennel, and wash their Feet with Beer and Butter, or some such thing, and pick and search their Cleys, for Thorns, Stubs, or the like: If it is in Winter, let a Fire be made, and let them beak and stretch themselves for an hour or so at the fire, and suffer them to lick, pick, and trim themselves; hereby to prevent the Diseases incident to them, upon sudden Cooling, as the Mange, Itch, ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... caress of the snows and which wintry dawns have made fragrant. More than once have I satisfied my hunger with it during these disastrous days when the briars have turned into rose-colored crystals, and when the agile wagtail utters its shrill cry toward the larvae which its beak can no longer reach beneath the ice along the banks. I shall continue to gnaw these barks. For, Oh Francis, I do not wish to die with these gentle friends who are in their agony, but rather I wish to live beside you and obtain ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... when the old-fashioned meeting-house was converted into the modern temple! Time and decay had rendered the tall spire unsafe, yet its fall by force and premeditated purpose seemed a sacrilege. I felt affronted for the huge weathercock, reclining sulkily against a fence, no more to point his beak to the east with obstinate preference. I mourned over the broad, old-fashioned dial, on which young eyes could discern the time a mile off. The old sexton lived to see this change, and at the end of half a century of care under that venerable ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... Grosbeak. So, too, in the pine woods they were showered by bits of cones, and looked aloft to make out a distant little bird busily engaged in tearing the cones to pieces. They laughed at his industry, but would have been immensely interested could they have examined at close hand the Crossbill's beak and its singular adaption to just this task. And of course they remarked the stately deliberate-looking prints of the grouse; and the herded tramping of the quail. The winter was populous enough, in spite of its rigour. Some of its many creatures the boys knew; ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... you shall go scot free and that no action criminal or civil shall lie against you, and this my secretary shall give to you in writing. Now, good fellow, rise, but steal Satan's plumes no more lest you should feel his claws and beak, for he is an ill fowl to mock. Bring hither that Spaniard Maldon. I have somewhat to ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... excellent skill, omitted nothing in the description, which either his arte could demonstrate, or any mans iudgement thinke woorthy the memory. After an exquisite suruey of the whole frame he found the length from the beak-head to the sterne (whereupon was erected a lanterne) to containe 165 foote. The breadth in the second close decke whereof she had three, this being the place where there was most extension of bredth, was 46 feet and ten inches. She drew in water 31 foot ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... little opportunity of observing him, for he had ridden all the way wrapped up in his great common soldier's cloak with its big collar turned up until it obscured every feature but his eyes and the mere point of a beak-like nose. Now, as he lay in an attitude of exhaustion, I went to assist him to a position of more comfort. I took the hook-and-eye which fastened the collar of the cloak and drew them apart; and such a countenance revealed ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... I sing on the branches early, And such my love of song, I sleep but half the night-tide rarely; No raven I, of greedy maw, no kite of bloody beak, No bird of devastating claw, but a woodland songster meek. I love the apple's infant bloom; my ancestry have fared For ages on the nourishment the orchard hath prepared: Their hey-day was the summer, their ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... was musing one day sorrowfully over his disappointed hopes, ashamed to go back to his village, to which he had never returned without success before, when, suddenly, a man of majestic presence stood before him. His nose was like the beak of an eagle, and his eyes resembled fires in a dark night. Strange feathers, of brilliant colors, were woven into his scalp-lock; a magnificent robe of skins depended from his shoulders; and in his hand he held a long spear, tipped ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Valentine, In many an orchard, copse, and grove, Assembled on affairs of love, And, with much twitter and much chatter, Began to agitate the matter. At length a bullfinch, who could boast More years and wisdom than the most, Entreated, opening wide his beak, A moment's liberty to speak; And, silence publicly enjoin'd, Deliver'd briefly thus his mind: "My friends, be cautious how ye treat The subject upon which we meet; I fear we shall have winter yet." A finch, whose tongue knew no control, With golden wing and satin ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... with his father, who gave him a whip made of a barley straw, to drive the oxen with; but an eagle, flying by, caught him up in his beak, and carried him to the top of a great giant's castle, and dropped him on the leads. The giant was walking on the battlements and thought at first that it was a foreign bird which lay at his feet, but soon seeing that it was ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... for many years, had all at once sprung upon one another in the Parliament House with the fury of vultures: Flood had screamed to Grattan that he was a mendicant patriot, and Grattan had called Flood an ill-omened bird of night, with a sepulchral note, a cadaverous aspect, and a broken beak. The Irish, like the French, have the art of making things dramatic, and Burke was the greatest of Irishmen. On the opening of the session of 1791, the Government had introduced a bill for the better government of Canada. It introduced questions about church establishments ...
— Burke • John Morley
... of crinoline along the positions to be occupied by the hooks and eyes; this gives strength to the finish. Sufficient material should be allowed for folding over the shanks after the hooks and eyes have been sewed on, or they may be covered with silk ribbon, slipping the edge under the beak of each hook and ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... with the sight of their greediness she held the worm high above them. At last she opened her fingers, and forthwith the fowls hustled one another and pounced upon the worm. One of them fled with it in her beak, pursued by the others; it was thus taken, snatched away, and retaken many times until one hen, with a mighty gulp, swallowed it altogether. At that they all stopped short with heads thrown back, and eyes on the alert for another worm. Desiree called them by their names, and ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... took a few seeds and began to coax the bird, until it, in point of fact, performed various tricks, on the stage, clasping in its beak a ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Then, with the suddenness and speed of a bolt from a catapult, the giant male shot out of a silvery mist of gloom and struck Peter. The two rolled over the carcass of the fawn, and for a space Peter was dazed by the thundering beat of powerful wings, and the hammering of the owl's beak at the back of his neck. The male had missed his claw-hold, and driven by rage and ferocity, fought to impale his victim from the ground, without launching himself into the air again. Swiftly he struck, again and again, while his wings beat like clubs. Suddenly his talons sank into the ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... pale eyes twinkled with a tiger's bloodthirsty greed. Her broad, flat nose, with nostrils expanded into oval cavities, breathed the fires of hell, and resembled the beak of some evil bird of prey. The spirit of intrigue lurked behind her low, cruel brow. Long hairs had grown from her wrinkled chin, betraying the masculine character of her schemes. Any one seeing that woman's face would have said that ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... explosive shells. They fired the guns backwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to speak, and rammed with the beak. That was the theory, you know, but they had never been fought. No one could tell exactly what was going to happen. And meanwhile I suppose it was very fine to go whirling through the air like a flight of young ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... you tell me no one had been here? (Shakes his finger at her.) My little song-bird must never do that again. A song-bird must have a clean beak to chirp with—no false notes! (Puts his arm round her waist.) That is so, isn't it? Yes, I am sure it is. (Lets her go.) We will say no more about it. (Sits down by the stove.) How warm and snug it is ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... woods! Silence! Deep silence! Save for the chortle of the night-jar, the tap of the snipe's beak against the tree-trunks, the snores of a weary game-keeper, the chirp of the burying-beetle, the croak of the bat, the wild laughter of the owl and the boom, boom of the frog, deep silence reigned. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... the end of that time a great coach and horses came up to the door of the king's house; and the jackdaw came in, and he took the edge of the young girl's dress in his beak to draw her out of the house. And she went away in the carriage with him, and they came to a sort of a castle, and went into it. And there was no one in it; but no sooner did they come in, than there was a table set out before them, with every sort of food and ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... beneath the zephyr's wing, Wears on her breast the varnished buds of Spring; When the loosed current, as its folds uncoil, Slides in the channels of the mellowed soil; When the young hyacinth returns to seek The air and sunshine with her emerald beak; When the light snowdrops, starting from their cells, Hang each pagoda with its silver bells; When the frail willow twines her trailing bow With pallid leaves that sweep the soil below; When the broad elm, sole empress of the plain, Whose circling ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of Johnston's hungry hawk had been broken in the Cumberland Mountains. Early in February, Johnston had withdrawn it from Kentucky before Buell's hosts, with its beak always to the foe. By the middle of the month, Grant had won the Western border States to the Union, with the capture of Fort Donelson. In April, the sun of Shiloh rose and set on the failure of the first Confederate aggressive campaign at the West; and in that fight Dan saw his first real battle, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... heavenly sweetness of temper, and precocious piety, proved the exact counterpart of her brother. Soon after her confinement, Francesca had a vision which impressed her with the belief that God would one day claim this child as His own. She saw a dove of dazzling whiteness, bearing in its beak a tiny lighted taper, enter the room; and after making two or three circles in the air, it stooped over Agnese's cradle, touched her brow and limbs with the taper, gently fluttered its wings, and flew away. Looking upon this as a sign that the little maiden would ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... into the fresh-forming foliage. The 'American blight' on apple trees is yet another member of the same family, a wee creeping cottony creature that hides among the fissures of the bark, and drives its very long beak far down into the green sappy layer underlying the dead outer covering. In fact, almost all the best-known 'blights' and bladder-forming insects are aphides of one kind or another, affecting leaves, or stalks, or ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... so fat that he reminds you, in his wig, of some droll old court officer in an illustrated nursery story-book, and yet all these fat features instinct with meaning, the fat lips curved and compressed, the nose combining somehow the dignity of a beak with the good nature of a bottle, and the very double chin with an air of intelligence and insight. And all these portraits are so pat and telling, and look at you so spiritedly from the walls, that, compared with the sort of ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the rock, that modern Prometheus, Captain Lysander Sprowl, like his mythical prototype, felt the vulture's beak in his vitals. Chagrin devoured his liver. An overflow of southern bile was the result, and he turned yellow to the whites of ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... principles I may give a simple example. Supposing a species of bird with a soft slender beak to be placed on an island, where the only food they could obtain was fruit enclosed in a hard or tough shell or covering. Supposing some birds accidentally possessed of a beak that was shorter and stouter ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... clapping their wings in the tree above him; then the five mystic beasts,—closest to his feet the irredeemable boar; then lion and bear, tiger, unicorn, and fiery dragon closest to his head, the flames of its mouth mingling with his breath as he sings. The audient eagle, alas! has lost the beak, and is only recognizable by his proud holding of himself; the duck, sleepily delighted after muddy dinner, close to his shoulder, is a true conquest. Hoopoe, or indefinite bird of crested race, behind; of the other three no clear certainty. The ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... selection, at the same time entirely ignoring my discussion (page 93, 3rd edition) on beautiful plumage being acquired through SEXUAL selection. The duke may think this insufficient, but that is another question. All analogy makes me quite disagree with the Duke that the difference in the beak, wing and tail, are not of importance to the several species. In the only two species which I have watched, the difference in flight and in the use of ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... of the Austro-Hungarian Empire bears to a monstrous bird of prey hovering threateningly over Italy. The body of the bird is formed by Hungary; Bohemia is the right wing, Bosnia and Dalmatia constitute the left; the Tyrol represents the head, while the savage beak, with its open jaws, is formed by that portion of the Tyrol commonly known as the Trentino. And that savage beak, you will note, is buried deep in the shoulder of Italy, holding between its jaws, as it were, the Lake of Garda. ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... bird had wonderful courage. Although plunged into the water and suffering one wave to break and pour over him, the great bird sprang into the air once more. He would not give up the fight! Russ and Rose saw the flashing eyes, the hooked beak parted, and every other evidence of the creature's putting forth a last remaining effort to reach a secure resting place ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... recounts her dream: 'I sat upon a desert shore, and from the mountain nigh, Right toward me, I seemed to see a gentle falcon fly; But close behind an eagle swooped, and struck that falcon down, And with talons and beak he rent the bird, as he cowered beneath my gown.' The chief of her maidens smiled, and said; 'To me it doth not seem That the Lady Alda reads aright the boding of her dream. Thou art the falcon, and thy knight is the eagle in his pride, As he ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... ecstacy of that divine creature, that the listeners were nearly beside themselves with ravishment and admiration. The nightingale now opened, and a little humming-bird of most surprising brilliancy hopped forth, and jumping up to the Queen, held out its beak, having a label therein, apparently beseeching her to accept the offering. She stooped down to receive the billet, which she hastily unfolded. What effect was visible on her countenance we cannot pretend to say, inasmuch as ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... standing in astonishment on the threshold. In the ruinous chamber, which was lighted scantily by a small grated window, he saw a large owl sitting on the floor. Large tears were rolling from her great round eyes, and with a hoarse voice she uttered complaints from her crooked beak. But when she beheld the caliph and his vizier, who had crept after him in the mean time, she raised a loud cry of joy. Then she gracefully wiped the tears from her eyes with her brown-spotted wing, and, to the great astonishment of both, she cried out, in good ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... break in the strata, by another, perhaps twenty feet higher, the upper portion being curiously wrought by nature's chisel into the shape of a human countenance. The forehead is shelving, the eyebrows heavy and menacing; the nose large and hooked like the beak of a hawk; the upper lip short, the chin prominent and pointed, while a thick growth of ferns in the shelter of the crag forming the nose gives the impression of a small mustache and goatee. Above the forehead a ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... parrot leaned his head on one side and directed a peculiar look at the jay. But Madan- manjari raised her beak high in the air, puffed through it once or twice, and turned away ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... reason the generous blood of the Belphers boiled over, and then—zing. They jerked him off to Vine Street. Like the poem, don't you know. 'And poor old Percy walked between with gyves upon his wrists.' And this morning, bright and early, the beak parted him from ten quid. You know, Maud, old thing, our duty stares us plainly in the eyeball. We've got to train old Boots down to a reasonable weight and spring him on the National Sporting Club. We've ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... kissed. The Countess Gemini simply nodded without getting up: Isabel could see she was a woman of high fashion. She was thin and dark and not at all pretty, having features that suggested some tropical bird—a long beak-like nose, small, quickly-moving eyes and a mouth and chin that receded extremely. Her expression, however, thanks to various intensities of emphasis and wonder, of horror and joy, was not inhuman, and, as regards her appearance, it was plain she understood ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... regular tug of war ensued. They pulled one another about for some time on the top of an awning, and finally, becoming tired of this, they dropped the straw and furiously attacked each other. They fought with beak and claw, paying no attention to the spectators, and fell exhausted to the sidewalk, where they lay upon their backs until able to hop slowly away from each other. It was some little time before they recovered strength to fly in opposite directions, ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... out of it—oh, the most loathsome-looking creature I ever saw; a huge, crawling, red shape that was like a blood-red spider, with the eyes, the hooked beak, and the writhing tentacles of an octopus. It made no sound, but it seemed to know her, to understand her, for when she waved her hand toward the open door of her own room it crawled away and, obeying that gesture, dragged its huge bulk over the threshold, and passed from sight. Then the ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Inn, as he passed along, he saw an old man counting on a table a big heap of gold pieces, which Kiki thought to be money. One of these would buy him supper and a bed, he reflected, so he transformed himself into a magpie and, flying through the open window, caught up one of the gold pieces in his beak and flew out again before the old man could interfere. Indeed, the old man who was robbed was quite helpless, for he dared not leave his pile of gold to chase the magpie, and before he could place the gold in a sack in his pocket the robber bird was out of sight ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... cause of variation. In one limited sense, as we shall hereafter see, this may be true; but it is preposterous to attribute to mere external conditions, the structure, for instance, of the woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak, and tongue, so admirably adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees. In the case of the misletoe, which draws its nourishment from certain trees, which has seeds that must be transported by ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... the air. Now Mr. Eagle was one of the biggest and strongest and most respected of all the birds of the air. There were some, like Mr. Goose and Mr. Swan, who were bigger, but they spent most of their time on the water or the earth, and they had no great claws or hooked beak to command respect as did Mr. Eagle. So Old Mother Nature made Mr. Eagle king of the air, and as was quite right and proper, all the birds ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... Wiggett, and one or two others he knew, and was talking pleasantly with them, when Peakslow pushed the inverted cut-water of his curved beak through the ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... and in some cases the jaws, though bearing teeth, are beak-like at their extremities and appear to have been enveloped in a horny sheath. In the part of the vertebral column which lies between the haunch bones and is called the sacrum, a number of vertebrae may unite together into one whole, and in this respect, ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... while only creating losses in the enemy's, which they easily repaired. It was, as M. Bourrienne has well said, a combat of an Alpine eagle with a flock of ravens: "The eagle may kill them by hundreds. Each blow of his beak is the death of an enemy; but the ravens return in still greater numbers, and continue their attack on the eagle until they at last overcome him." At Champ-Aubert, at Montmirail, at Nangis, at Montereau, and at Arcis, and in twenty other engagements, the Emperor obtained ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of our visitor was a surprise to me, since I had expected a typical country practitioner. He was a very tall, thin man, with a long nose like a beak, which jutted out between two keen, gray eyes, set closely together and sparkling brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He was clad in a professional but rather slovenly fashion, for his frock-coat was dingy and ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... sweetly down the scale once more. Along the shore, too, there is life; guillemot, oyster-catcher, tern are busy there; the wagtail is out in search of food, advancing in little spurts, trim and pert with its pointed beak and swift little flick of a tail; after a while it flies up to perch on a fence and sing with the rest. But when the sun has set, may come the cry of a loon from some hill-tarn; a melancholy hurrah. That is the last; now there is only the grasshopper left. And there's ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... build their nest in the very corner of his little chamber window. The birds labored with the ardor of two young lovers who are in haste to start in housekeeping. The male bird brought the moistened clay in his beak, which the female kneaded, and with the addition of some chips of straw and hay, she built her little lodging with wonderful skill. As soon as the outside was finished, the betrothed gathered feathers, hair, and soft dry leaves for the inside, and then departed to hide themselves in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Jorian oracularly, "for I was brought up along with a chough. He and I were born the same year, but he cut his teeth long before me, and wow! but my life was a burden for years all along of him. If you had but a hole in your hose no bigger than a groat, in went his beak like a gimlet; and, for stealing, Gerard all over. What he wanted least, and any poor Christian in the house wanted most, that went first. Mother was a notable woman, so if she did but look round, away flew her thimble. Father lived by cordwaining, so about sunrise Jack went diligently ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... unobserved by the captive, stole over the rim of the stub to investigate things in the gloomy interior and, while its brethren were busy outside found an undisputed field for activity in the cavity. Swooping low it dug its sharp, strong beak into Warruk's back just above the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... which are lower in the scale than mammals, pass through a stage in which they resemble mammals in certain respects much more than they do when adult, for in an embryonic condition they agree with mammals in having no feathers, no air sacs, no pneumatic sacs in the bones, no beak. Their brain also resembles that of mammals more in an earlier stage than it does later. So, too, myriapods and hydrachnids have at birth three pairs of feet, and resemble at this stage adult insects, which form ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... because it has two wattles under its beak as large as those of a small dunghill-cock, is larger, particularly in length, than an English black-bird. Its bill is short and thick, and its feathers of a dark lead colour; the colour of its wattles is a dull yellow, almost ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... well, and a eagle had come to rest on her bosom, symbolical, mebby, of how wimmen's heart has, all through the ages, been the broodin' place and the rest of eagle man, and her heart warmed by its soft, flutterin' feathers, and pierced by its cruel beak. ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... foolish daw! Crow that thou art! Had I known thou hadst such a word in thy beak, I'd have wrung thy neck sooner than have brought thee," muttered Perronel. "I had best take thee home without ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The beak opened sharply to drop its unconscious burden upon the deck, and the watching man, petrified with horror, saw within the gaping maw great sucking discs and beyond them a brilliant glow. The whole cavernous pit was aflame with phosphorescent ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... is life But a spectre-crowded tomb? Startled with unearthly strife, Spirits fierce in conflict met, In the lightning and the gloom, The agony and sweat; Passions wild and powers insane, And thoughts with vulture beak, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the more formidable by a heavy iron beak, for the purpose of running down and sinking the enemy's vessels; a kind of hanging stage was also placed on the prow of the ship, which could be lowered in front or on either side. It was furnished on both sides with parapets, and had space for ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... chicken grows the horny tip to its beak with which it ultimately pecks its way out of its shell, because it remembers having grown it before, and the use it made of it. We say that it made it on the same principles as a man makes a spade or a hammer, that is to ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... It so happened that Merton had fired just as the bird was about to fly, and had only broken a wing. The owl fell to the ground, but led the boy a wild pursuit before he was captured. Merton's hands were bleeding when he brought the creature in. Unless prevented, it would strike savagely with its beak, and the motions of its head were as quick as lightning. It was, indeed, a strange captive, and the children looked at it in wondering and rather fearful curiosity. My wife, usually tender-hearted, wished the creature, ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... had he touched the black bird's beak with the blood, than it changed, and a handsome youth in kingly dress ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... conceive such a result," repeated Mr. Farebrother, emphatically. "There is a companionship of ready sympathy, which might get the advantage even over the longest associations." It seemed to Fred that if Mr. Farebrother had had a beak and talons instead of his very capable tongue, his mode of attack could hardly be more cruel. He had a horrible conviction that behind all this hypothetic statement there was a knowledge of some actual ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... fish, frogs and lizards form the basis of their food. According to Petherick, they do not disdain dead animals, whose carcasses they disembowel with their powerful hooked beak. They pass the night upon the ground, upon trees and upon high rocks. As regards nest-making and egg-laying, opinions are most contradictory. According to Verreaux, the balaeniceps builds its nest of earth, vegetable debris, reeds, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... proceeded cautiously to examine the lock. I got it well into view, but no more of the gun. It turned out to be an old-fashioned flint-lock. It immediately began to nod backwards and forwards in a manner suggestive of the beak of a bird pecking. Consequently it forthwith became converted into the head of a bird with a long curved beak, the knob on the lock (3) becoming the head of the bird. I then looked to the right expecting to find the barrel, but the snout of a saw-fish ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... tempted, and must escape too. "With the temptation." As sure as Satan is licensed, so sure he is limited; and when Satan has ended all the temptation, he shall depart from thee (Luke 4:13). "He will with the temptation"—by such a managing of it as shall beak its own neck. God can admit Satan to tempt, and make the Christian wise to manage the temptation ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to supply their place, and thus goes on from day to day, till she has laid upwards of forty in the season. Timbo asserted that not only does man wage war against the ostrich, but that a white vulture is particularly fond of her eggs. As his beak is not sufficiently strong to break the shell, he seizes a large stone between his talons, and soaring with it high into the air, gets over the nest; he then lets it drop upon the eggs, seldom failing to break a sufficient number to afford himself a repast. The young ostriches, ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... that we address our doleful lamentation: it is not to the Prince of Peace, whose declaration of war was one of the first auspicious omens of general tranquillity, which our dove-like ambassador, with the olive-branch in his beak, was saluted with at his entrance into the ark ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the top of the 'Stadhuis' gleamed. His beak was open like a pair of scissors and a narrow piece of blue sky was wedged in it. "Cock-a-doodle-do," cried the little boy. "Can't you hear me through the window, Gold Cocky? Cock-a-doodle-do! You should crow when you see the eggs ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... hid in thickets Where the redbird stops to stick its Ruddy beak betwixt the pickets Of the truant's rustic trap; And the sound of laughter ringing Where, within the wild-vine swinging, Climb Bacchante's schoolmates, flinging Purple ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... moving very slowly and stealthily. But the guardian male resented this bold intrusion, and attacked him with beak ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... escaped from the old man's hands it ran off down the high-road. While thus pursuing its way, lo and behold! it found a little purse with two half-pennies. Taking it in its beak, the bird turned and went back toward the old man's house. On the road it met a carriage containing a gentleman and several ladies. The gentleman looked at the rooster, saw a purse in its bill, and ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... the stuffed parroquet on her birthday, and Mamma had given her the Bible and the two grey china vases to make up, with a bird painted on each. A black bird with a red beak and red legs. She had set them up on the chimney-piece under the picture of the Holy Family. She put the Bible in the middle and the parroquet on the top of the Bible and the vases ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... sound,[qx] Like crying babe, and beaten hound:[409] With sudden wing, and ruffled breast, The eagle left his rocky nest, And mounted nearer to the sun, The clouds beneath him seemed so dun; Their smoke assailed his startled beak, And made him higher soar and shriek— Thus was Corinth ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... of the life of the South, when her wounded people lay helpless amid rags and ashes under the beak and talon of the Vulture, suddenly from the mists of the mountains appeared a white cloud the size of a man's hand. It grew until its mantle of mystery enfolded the stricken earth and sky. An "Invisible Empire" had risen from the field of Death and challenged ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... peak of an attic window, and looked down into the areas, remaining in this position a considerable time. Now it has taken a flight, and alighted on the roof of this house, directly over the window at which I sit, so that I can look up and see its head and beak, and the tips of its claws. The roofs of the low out-houses are black with moisture; the gutters are full of water, and there is a little puddle where there is a place for it in the hollow of a board. On the grass-plot are strewn the fallen blossoms of the ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Broder came creeping to the king making a sort of moan, and seemed to bewail its master's punishment; and his hawk, when it was brought in, began to pluck out its breast-feathers with its beak. The king took its nakedness as an omen of his bereavement, to frustrate which he quickly sent men to take his son down from the noose: for he divined by the featherless bird that he would be childless unless he took good ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... sac, a pocket, an elastic mask, in whose interior existed only water or air. Between their armpits was their mouth, armed with long jaw bones, like a parrot's beak. When breathing, a crack of their skin would open and close alternately. From one of their sides came forth a tube in the form of a tunnel that swallowed equally the respirable water and drew it through both entrances into its branching cavity. Their multiple arms, fitted out with cupping ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... floor. Then the wolf shook himself and became a snow white cock, which fell to picking up the grains purposing not to leave one; but by doom of destiny one seed rolled to the fountain edge and there lay hid. The cock fell to crowing and clapping his wings and signing to us with his beak as if to ask, ' Are any grains left?" But we understood not what he meant, and he cried to us with so loud a cry that we thought the palace would fall upon us. Then he ran over all the floor till he saw the grain which had rolled to the fountain edge, and rushed eagerly to pick it ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... "When I first came here there was a smith's anvil in this place, and I was then a young bird, and from that time no work has been done upon it, save the pecking of my beak every evening, and now there is not so much as the size of a nut remaining thereof; yet the vengeance of Heaven be upon me if during all that time I have ever heard of the man for whom you inquire. Nevertheless, there is a race of animals who were formed before me, ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... said my uncle, "but his beak shows through. Not in vain hath Egypt brooded all these years, if thou fail not with that dagger-stroke of thine to-night; and how canst thou fail? Nothing can now stop ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... I, bound upon this pillared rock, Prey to the vulture of a vast desire That feeds upon my life. I burst my bands And steal a moment's freedom from the beak, The clinging talons and the shadowing plumes; Then comes the false enchantress, with her song; "Thou wouldst not lay thy forehead in the dust Like the base herd that feeds and breeds and dies! Lo, the fair garlands that I weave for thee, Unchanging as the belt Orion wears, Bright as the jewels of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of the wind shook the very rafters of the house as though some great bird had grasped it with beak and talons, and Priscilla stopped her swift needle, drawing it out to its full length of linen thread and holding it there. A strange puzzled look was on her face—she seemed to be listening intently. Presently, taking off her spectacles, she laid them ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... have," said the doctor, readjusting his spectacles. "Here is a splendid one. No: a blackbird has been digging his beak into that. And into this one too. Really, my dear, I'm afraid that my garden friends and foes have been tasting them all. No, here is one with nothing the matter, save the contusion consequent from its fall from ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... half-dead with thirst, came upon a Pitcher which had once been full of water; but when the Crow put its beak into the mouth of the Pitcher he found that only very little water was left in it, and that he could not reach far enough down ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... provide themselves with wheat! All their labour seemed in vain, and they were greatly distressed as to what they would do for food if they had no harvest to look forward to, when suddenly they saw, perched on a little wayside cross, a tiny robin redbreast holding in its beak an ear of wheat! The monks joyfully took the grain, and, sowing it, reaped an abundant harvest! Accounts vary somewhat in the details of this story. Some say that the bird led the monks to a store of grain, and others question the fact that the bird was a robin, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... face wore an expression of audacity, bordering on cruelty; his hair, lying in close, damp meshes, was of a deep red; his mustache of the same color hid a large mouth overshadowed by a hooked nose, resembling the beak of a bird ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... sidled up to her and began talking about what a great work the christian wimmen of the land were doing in educating the heathen, she felt real good, and then she noticed Pa's posey in his button-hole and she touched it, and then she reached over her beak to smell of it. Pa he squeezed the bulb, and about half a teacupful of water struck her right in the nose, and some went into her strangle place, and O, my, didn't ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... which had been represented many times by Greek artists. The boy seems to be working as hard as any giant could do. The execution of this work is fine. It was probably made for a fountain, the water coming through the beak of the goose. There are several works of ancient sculpture which are of the same spirit, and for this reason are attributed to Boethus. The Spinario, or Thorn-extractor, in the museum of the Capitol, at Rome, is one of the most charming pieces of genre statuary ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... reaching the ears of the English ambassador, it was met with instant and angry remonstrance. "The ambassador," wrote the grand master to Francis, "has been to me in great displeasure, and has told me roundly that his master is trifled with by us. We give him words in plenty to keep his beak in the water; but it is very plain that we are playing false, and that no honesty is intended. Nor are his words altogether without reason; for many persons declare openly that nothing will be done. If the alliance of England, therefore, appear of importance to your Highness, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... was quite blue. After a few seconds of immobility, he tried to breathe: he put out his lips, opened his poor mouth, like a little bird opening its beak to get a last mouthful of air. ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... makes reply! Ere this hath Lucas marched, with his gallant cavaliers, And the bray of Rupert's trumpets grows fainter in our ears. To horse! to horse! Sir Nicholas! White Guy is at the door, And the raven whets his beak o'er the field of ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... body—legs, arms and chest—was as hairy as the skin of an ape; his hands and feet were crooked, like the claws of a tiger. As to his visage, nothing more fantastic and frightful could be imagined. Amid a thick, bristling beard, a nose like an owl's beak and a mouth whose corners were drawn by a wild-beast-like rictus were just discernible. The eyes were half hidden by his thick, bushy, curly hair. Each curl ended in a spiral, pointed and twisted like a gimlet, and on peering at them closely ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... Eagle holds in its beak a strip of paper with "E. Pluribus Unum" on it, which means ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... the King of Birds, Rex Avium, looketh at the Sun, intuetur Solem, as indeed he could hardly avoid doing, since in the "cut" the sun was within a hairsbreath of his beak, while his claws were almost touching a crow (Corvus) perched on a dead horse, to exemplify how Aves Raptores ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scatters the blue powder. His plumage, of orange colour, seems composed of metallic scales. His dainty head, adorned with a silver tuft, exhibits a human visage. He has four wings, a vulture's claws, and an immense peacock's tail, which he displays in a ring behind him. He seizes in his beak the Queen's parasol, staggers a little before he finds his equilibrium, then erects all his feathers, and ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... "Star". Everybody is sorry for you, old man,' he says to Jim. 'I shouldn't wonder if they'd make you a beak if you'd stayed there long enough. I'm afraid Dick's dropping the policeman won't add to our ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... they were aboard the captain set sail, and they were soon in the hollows of deep waters. There was a berth in the ship set apart for Shibli Bagarag, and one for the captain. Shibli Bagarag, when he entered his berth, beheld at the head of his couch a hawk; its eyes red as rubies, its beak sharp as the curve of a scimitar. So he called out to the captain, and the captain came to him; but when he saw the hawk, he plucked his turban from his head, and dashed it at the hawk, and afterward ran to it, trying to catch it; and the hawk flitted from corner ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... river we are struck with more than one peculiar mode of taking fish. We see a number of cormorants perched on the sides of a boat. Now and then a bird dives into the water and comes up with a fish in its beak. If the fish be a small one, the bird swallows it as a reward for its services; but a fish of considerable size is hindered in its descent by a ring around the bird's neck and becomes the booty of the fisherman. The birds appear to be well-trained; ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... is said to have gone one hundred and fifty miles in a day and a night. These boats were about one hundred and twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide. They could be rowed in shallow water, but were not high enough to ride heavy seas safely. They had a sharp beak, which, driven against an enemy's ship, would break in its sides. The Greek grain ships and freight boats were heavier and more capable of enduring ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... table, it was Nile green. Yet the feathers were painted in flat color, without especial sheen or iridescence, and when I finally analyzed it, I found it to be a delicate calamine blue. It actually had the appearance of a too strong color, as when a glistening surface reflects the sun. From beak to tail it threw off this glowing hue, except for its chin and throat, which were a limpid amaranth purple; and the effect on the excited rods and cones in one's eyes was like the power of great music or some majestic passage in the Bible. You, who think my similes are overdone, search ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... they have thus far missed the two things she brought them out to learn: to take a fish always as he comes up; and to hit a wave always on the front side, under the crest. Gripping her fish tightly, she bends in her slow flight and paralyzes it by a single blow in the spine from her hooked beak. Then she drops it back into the whitecaps, where, jumping to the top of my rock, I can see it occasionally struggling ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... to represent a human figure with accuracy, it is furnished with a crown, as are the figures in gold and stone, and is covered with devices that seem to refer to costume. The features are extremely grotesque, the nose resembling the beak of a bird and the mouth being a mere ridge, without indications of the lips. The face and the chest are painted with curious devices in red. The funnel and body of the vase are decorated with subjects that seem to have no connection with ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... of young Desire, and purple light of Love;" "The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye;" "Their feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky loves;" "Sailing with supreme dominion Through the azure deep of air;" "Beneath the good how far, but far above the great" "High-born Hoel's harp, and soft ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... to college, but to Ashtabula, wherever that is, and I never wish to see him. But to college was America sent,—to be "hazed," and taunted, and called "E Plury," and his beak and claws inquired after, through the freshman year. I never knew how he went through,—I mean, with what feelings. Of course, he was the first scholar. But that, even, must have been but a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... partridge had fallen within a yard of me, with its beak and claws pointing to the sky, and when the line had passed where we lay Tom lagged behind to look for it. He did not find it then, whether he ever found it afterwards I am sure I don't know. ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... tender germ of the plant to break through the hard crust of the earth and, stretching toward the light, to enfold itself in the proud crown of the palm-tree. Will sharpens the beak of the eagle and the tooth of the tiger and, finally, reaches its highest grade of objectivation in the human brain. Want, the struggle for existence, the necessity of procuring and selecting sufficient food for the preservation of the individual and the species, has at last developed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... cranium, and, indeed, the whole skull, was so small as to be disagreeably suggestive of something animal. The nose, on the other hand, was abnormally large; so extravagant were its dimensions, and so peculiar its shape, it resembled the beak of some bird of prey. A characteristic of the face—and an uncomfortable one!—was that, practically, it stopped short at the mouth. The mouth, with its blubber lips, came immediately underneath the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... erect, smooth, and branching stem. The flowers are quite large, and, in the different kinds, vary in color from clear white to various shades of purple. The seed-pods are long, smooth, somewhat vesiculate, and terminate in a short spur, or beak. The seeds are round, often irregularly flattened or compressed: those of the smaller or spring and summer varieties being of a grayish-red color; and those of the winter or larger-rooted sorts, of a yellowish-red. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... them. There is one large thick-shelled mussel that I have found several times with a round hole drilled through the shell, just as if it had been done with a small auger, —doubtless the work of some bird with a strong beak." ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... think," said a fox to a crane, "That face, ma'am of yours is remarkably plain; That beak that you wear is so frightful a feature, It makes you appear a most singular creature." The crane, much offended at what she had heard, March'd off at full speed, without saying a word: "Oh dear!" said the fox, "Mrs. Crane, I protest You misunderstand me, 'twas only a jest." "Come, ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... junks in the bay are about 120 tons burthen, 100 feet long, with an extreme beam, far aft, of twenty-five feet. The bow is long, and curves into a lofty stem, like that of a Roman galley, finished with a beak head, to secure the forestay of the mast. This beak is furnished with two large, goggle eyes. The mast is a ponderous spar, fifty feet high, composed of pieces of pine, pegged, glued, and hooped together. A heavy yard is hung amidships. The sail ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... with me. Yesterday evening I went out with him shooting. He shot at a snipe; the bird, shot in the wing, fell into a pool. I picked it up: a long beak, big black eyes, and beautiful plumage. It looked at me with surprise. What was I to do with it? Levitan scowled, shut his eyes, and begged me, with a quiver in his voice: "My dear fellow, hit him on the head with the butt-end of your gun." I said: "I can't." He went on nervously, shrugging ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... the occident, an eagle, Is not classed among the largest, Nor belongs he to the smallest; One wing touches on the waters, While the other sweeps the heavens; O'er the waves he wings his body, Strikes his beak upon the sea-cliffs, Flies about, then safely perches, Looks before him, looks behind him, There beholds brave Wainamoinen, On the blue-back of the ocean, And the eagle thus accosts him: "Wherefore art thou, ancient hero, Swimming in the deep-sea billows? Thus the water-minstrel answered: ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... place of the old. The Merrimac is not a frigate any longer; she's the iron-clad Virginia, and we rather think she's going to make her name remembered. She's over there at the Gosport Navy Yard, and she's almost ready. She's covered over with iron plates, and she's got an iron beak, or ram, and she carries ten guns. On the whole, she's the ugliest beauty that you ever saw! She's almost ready to send to Davy Jones's locker a Yankee ship or two. Commodore Buchanan commands her, and you know who he is! She's got her full quota of officers, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... times the Carrancha is noisy, but is not generally so: its cry is loud, very harsh and peculiar, and may be likened to the sound of the Spanish guttural g, followed by a rough double r r; when uttering this cry it elevates its head higher and higher, till at last, with its beak wide open, the crown almost touches the lower part of the back. This fact, which has been doubted, is quite true; I have seen them several times with their heads backwards in a completely inverted position. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... sobriquet was justified, for the man was so long and thin as to give the impression of bones strung on strings. He walked in jerks: his flat, narrow feet posed precisely, the head held forward, like some gaunt bird seeking with its lengthy beak for any meagre grain which might chance in its way. Somehow one felt the grain he sought must be meagre. 'The good God wills that Forstner lives,' said Madame de Ruth, 'and God knows he lives according to God's rules; but oh! how more than ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... referred, by the eminent comparative anatomist above mentioned, to the order of the Lizards. In this singular reptile (fig. 151) the skull is somewhat bird-like, and the jaws appear to have been destitute of teeth, and to have been encased in a horny sheath like the beak of a Turtle or a Bird. It is possible, however, that the ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... nest, then replace it in the nest, and secrete oneself near by with a crossbow, under a red and white umbrella, until the mother bird, finding one of her eggs resists all her endeavors to infuse warmth into it, flies off, and plunges into the nearest fire, and returns with this ring in her beak. With Schamir she will touch the boiled egg, and so restore the egg to its former condition. At that moment she must be shot, and the ring must be secured, before the falcon can return the talisman to its owner. I mean, to its dreadful owner, ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... him gently with his sharp flint beak. There was no Iktomi, but two arrows stood ready to fly. "Now, young arrow, this is the one condition. Your flight must always be in a straight line. Never turn a curve nor jump about like a young fawn," said the arrow magician. He spoke ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... her mind for a long time, but she was interrupted by the dismal croaking of a raven overhead. Lifting her eyes, she saw in the dim light a large raven on the point of swallowing a frog which it held in its beak. 'Though I have no hope of help for myself,' she said, 'I will not let this unfortunate frog die, if I can save it; though our lots are so different, its sufferings are quite as great as mine.' She picked up the first stick which came to hand, and made the raven let go its prey. ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... outward observances. The Pharisee is always blind as an owl to the light of God and true goodness; keen-sighted as a hawk for trivial breaches of his cobweb regulations, and cruel as a vulture to tear with beak and claw. The race is not extinct. We all carry one inside us, and need God's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... command was given, and the parrot instantly seized the sponger in its beak, and inserting it within the muzzle without the slightest difficulty, vigorously moved it backwards and forwards, and then replaced ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... there was a horny beak, like a parrot's, in the mouth, and that on the under side of the head ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... six or seven feet out of water, disappeared under the swell of the Vulcan's hull. Suddenly the tug swung her blunt beak around with the sidelong blow of an angry swine. Madden went flying to the right rail of the bridge to stare down at ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... Proconsul, 'how has the time passed with thee since I deserted Ephesus? Hast seen yet the charming Ionian girl who is to smite thy heart like the sharpened beak of a war bireme when it sends its prow into the soft pinewood sides of an enemy's ship? No? Well, I am sorry for thee, Chios. Thou deservedst a better fate. Nika told me of thy wanderings to Delos. Didst thou have pleasure in ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... superiority of a foul-mouthed Lance-Corporal who might well have been your own stable-boy, a being who can show you a deeper depth of hell in Hell, wreak his dislike of you in unfair "fatigues," and keep you at the detested job of coal-drawing on Wednesdays; who can achieve a "canter past the beak"[21] for you on a trumped-up charge and land you in the "digger,"[22] who can bring it home to you in a thousand ways that you are indeed the toad beneath the harrow. Fancy having to remember, night and ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Daedalion would have thrown himself from the top of the rock, made him into a bird, and supported him, hovering {in the air} upon {these} sudden wings; and he gave him a curved beak, and crooked claws on his talons, his former courage, and strength greater {in proportion} than his body; and, now {become} a hawk, sufficiently benignant to none, he rages {equally} against all birds; and grieving {himself}, becomes the cause of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Samians branded the figure of an owl on the foreheads of their Athenian prisoners, to revenge themselves for the branding of their own prisoners by the Athenians with the figure of a samaina. This is a ship having a beak turned up like a swine's snout, but with a roomy hull, so as both to carry a large cargo and sail fast. This class of vessel is called samaina because it was first built at Samos by Polycrates, the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... shoulder stretched his wings, pressing against her cheek with his breast, tipping forward on his pink feet, until his beak reached the crumb and he took ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... like a bird Slips lightly oceanward— Sail feathering smooth o'er the bay And beak that drinks the wild spray. In his eyes beams cheerily A light like the sun's on the sea, As he watches the waning strand, Where the foam, like a waving hand Of one who mutely would tell Her love, ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... what his crime? Or what ill planet crossed his prime? Heart too soft and will too weak To front the fate that crouches near,— Dove beneath the vulture's beak;— Will song dissuade the thirsty spear? Dragged from his mother's arms and breast, Displaced, disfurnished here, His wistful toil to do his best Chilled by a ribald jeer. Great men in the Senate sate, Sage and hero, side by side, Building for ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... parliamentary bodies are swayed by a few persons—the working members are the exception. The horse-racing and cockfighting contingent in the House of Commons is well represented; the blear eyes, the poddy pudge, the bulbous beak—all these are in evidence. If one man out of ten knows what is going on, it is well; and this is equally true of Washington, for our representatives do ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... near about this time that a caricature was circulated in Rome, representing Sixtus as King Stork and the Romans as frogs vainly attempting to escape from his devouring beak. Merito haec patimur, "We suffer deservedly," was the legend of the picture, and the moral it conveyed was a true one. Rome was in such a state as to require the harshest applications, and the despotic severity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a sparrow," said they; but they, nevertheless, did not let her fly, but took her home with them, and every time she cried they gave her a tap on the beak. ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... up, saw the hawk in full swing, not many hundred yards distant, with the bird in its beak, fluttering and struggling ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... entertain a thought of welcoming either Wantonness or Sloth? Or who in such straits, would permit themselves to be distracted either by Hypocrisy or Inconsiderateness? No, no! they are too awake then, and not one of the infernal flies of Bewilderment, which shows its beak, will buzz, during one of these storms. But Ease, smooth Ease, is the nurse of you all: in her calm shadow, and in her teeming bosom ye are all bred, and also every other infernal worm of the conscience, which will come to gnaw its possessor ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... the mast to the bow and stern. There was usually a deck at the bow and stern, but never in the centre of the vessel. Steering was managed by means of a huge broad oar, sometimes a couple, at the stern. A formidable "beak" was affixed to the fore-part of the ships of war, with which the crew charged the enemy. The vessels were painted black, with red ornaments on the bows; to which latter Homer is supposed to refer when he ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... strong bills can drill a hole in a man's skull in a moment. We shouted at the top of our voices, but the man could not hear us. Fortunately he saw the bird coming, and whipping off his shoe he held it in his hand to defend himself. Down swooped the albatross, when seizing the shoe in its beak off it flew again, and did not drop it for a minute or more. A boat was lowered, and the man picked up not much the worse; and the surgeon of the ship, who had got his rifle ready, shot the same albatross some minutes after. It measured, I mind, fourteen feet and a few inches from tip to ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... petrel wheeled somewhere between deepening carmine and paling blue, and it took my thoughts off at an earthy tangent. I thanked God there were no big sea-birds in these latitudes; no molly-hawks, no albatrosses, no Cape-hens. I thought of an albatross that I had caught going out. Its beak and talons were at the bottom with the charred remains of the Lady Jermyn. But I could see them still, could feel them shrewdly in my mind's flesh; and so to the old superstition, strangely justified by my case; and so to the poem which I, with ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Turky Bustard, is of the size and shape of a Turky-cock; his head is covered with red flesh, and his plumage is black: he has a hooked beak, but his toes are armed with very small talons, and are therefore very improper for seizing live game, which indeed he does not chuse to attack, as his want of agility prevents him from darting upon it with the rapidity of a bird of prey. Accordingly he lives only upon the dead beasts that he ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... hope,—the illusion, ridiculous or sublime, which kept her going,—that they would have stamped out on the instant, with the whole Garnet pack behind them to make extinction sure. All, except, perhaps, Miletus Poppas. He was a vulture of the vulture race, and he had the beak of one. But I always felt that if ever he had her thus at his mercy,—if ever he came upon the softness that was hidden under so much hardness, the warm credulity under a life so dated and scheduled and "reported" and generally exposed,—he would ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... indigo; feathers heightened by brown ochre and white; beak and claws saffron, shaded with bistre; eyes vermilion, heightened with masticot ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... flies. He leaves the gates, he leaves the wall behind: Achilles follows like the winged wind. Thus at the panting dove a falcon flies (The swiftest racer of the liquid skies), Just when he holds, or thinks he holds his prey, Obliquely wheeling through the aerial way, With open beak and shrilling cries he springs, And aims his claws, and shoots upon his wings: No less fore-right* the rapid chase they held, One urged by fury, one by fear impell'd: Now circling round the walls their ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... on my rugs in the shade. Presently I had some visitors in a flock of urracas, or magpies, as they are called in the vernacular, or Guira cuckoos; a graceful, loquacious bird resembling a magpie, only with a longer tail and a bold, red beak. These ill-mannered birds skulked about in the branches over me all the time I remained in the wood, scolding me so incessantly in their intolerably loud, angry, rattling notes, varied occasionally with ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... swallow stopt as he hunted the bee, The snake slipt under a spray; The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak, And stared, with his foot on the prey; And the nightingale thought, 'I have sung many songs, But never a one so gay; For he sings of what the world will be When the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... inches in height. At that moment some rays of the setting sun broke through the gray clouds and shone full upon it, lighting up the defiant scalp lock interwoven with the brilliant red feather, the eagle face with the curved Roman beak, and the mighty shoulders and chest of red bronze. It was a genuine king of the wilderness, none other than the mighty Timmendiquas himself, the great White Lightning ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... attic window, and looked down into the areas, remaining in this position a considerable time. Now it has taken a flight, and alighted on the roof of this house, directly over the window at which I sit, so that I can look up and see its head and beak, and the tips of its claws. The roofs of the low out-houses are black with moisture; the gutters are full of water, and there is a little puddle where there is a place for it in the hollow of a board. On ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prejudice could find, whether that prejudice was inspired by a lofty zeal for what it conceived to be the highest interests of humanity, or by a crafty policy which saw in the new doctrine a blow to the coming renewed supremacy of the Church. To us, now, it may seem that Huxley had "sharpened his beak and claws" with the spirit of a gladiator rather than with that of the mere defender of a scientific doctrine; but a very short study of contemporary literature will convince anyone that for a time the defenders ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... farmyard. In less than five minutes the huge bird was encompassed in a cloud of flying sand, and working her long neck, great thick legs, and outspread toes exactly as an ordinary fowl. Then, having thoroughly covered herself with sand from beak to tail, she rose, shook herself violently, and stalked away up the bank again, where her companion soon followed her, and I lost sight of the pair as they strode through the thick ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... no regular diploma—has mastered the simpler elements of Materia Medica, and does in reality effect cures. I class him among what are popularly known as humbugs, however, for he is a pretender to more wisdom than he possesses. It was to me a strange and suggestive scene—the bald, beak-nosed, coal-eyed charlatan, standing in the market-place, so celebrated in history, peering through his gold spectacles at the upturned faces below him, while the bony skeleton at his side swayed in the wind, and the grinning skulls below, made grotesque faces, as if laughing ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... quite dead; the other struggled violently as Robin seized it by the neck, and tried to dart its beak at him, very nearly upsetting the canoe. As soon as Martin and I had hauled the other bird on board, we went to his assistance, Martin holding the poor bird tight round the neck till its struggles ceased, when we also ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... broad yellow collar; the wings were green, changing to violet towards the edges, and while the feathers on its thighs were of a lovely azure, those of the tail were scarlet, banded with black and tipped with yellow. Its beak which by its shape showed that the bird was a species of parrot, was ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... and fifty miles in a day and a night. These boats were about one hundred and twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide. They could be rowed in shallow water, but were not high enough to ride heavy seas safely. They had a sharp beak, which, driven against an enemy's ship, would break in its sides. The Greek grain ships and freight boats were heavier and more capable of ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... cock may be known by his muscular carriage, his red comb, a beak short, strong and sharp, eyes tawny or black, wattles a whitish red, neck spotted or tinged with gold, the second joint of his legs well covered with feathers, short legs long spurs, a heavy tail, and profuse feathers, also by ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... began to retreat. Instantly Ba-ree's indecision had flown to the four winds. With one sharp excited yelp he flew at the defiant bird. For a few moments there was a thrilling race, and Ba-ree's sharp little teeth buried themselves in the jay's feathers. Swift as a flash the bird's beak began to strike. The jay was the king of the smaller birds. In nesting season it killed the brush sparrows, the mild-eyed moose-birds, and the tree-sappers. Again and again it struck Ba-ree with its powerful beak, but the son of Kazan had now reached ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... dying. His face was quite blue. After a few seconds of immobility, he tried to breathe: he put out his lips, opened his poor mouth, like a little bird opening its beak to get a last mouthful of air. And ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... is staying with me. Yesterday evening I went out with him shooting. He shot at a snipe; the bird, shot in the wing, fell into a pool. I picked it up: a long beak, big black eyes, and beautiful plumage. It looked at me with surprise. What was I to do with it? Levitan scowled, shut his eyes, and begged me, with a quiver in his voice: "My dear fellow, hit him on the head with the butt-end ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... front in order to win a battle. The woman of fashion ceases to be a woman; she is neither mother, nor wife, nor lover. She is, medically speaking, sex in the brain. And your Marquise, too, has all the characteristics of her monstrosity, the beak of a bird of prey, the clear, cold eye, the gentle voice—she is as polished as the steel of a machine, she touches everything ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... entrance. All parliamentary bodies are swayed by a few persons—the working members are the exception. The horse-racing and cockfighting contingent in the House of Commons is well represented; the blear eyes, the poddy pudge, the bulbous beak—all these are in evidence. If one man out of ten knows what is going on, it is well; and this is equally true of Washington, for our representatives do ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... had but little opportunity of observing him, for he had ridden all the way wrapped up in his great common soldier's cloak with its big collar turned up until it obscured every feature but his eyes and the mere point of a beak-like nose. Now, as he lay in an attitude of exhaustion, I went to assist him to a position of more comfort. I took the hook-and-eye which fastened the collar of the cloak and drew them apart; and such a countenance revealed itself ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... and that I can. 'Twas a quist a-cooing in the tree one time—and then—she did recollect herself and did sharpen up her tongue and 'twas another sort of bird what could drive its beak into the flesh of ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... now, there was great war between Lir of Sidhe Fionnachaidh and Ilbrec of Ess Ruadh. There used a bird with an iron beak and a tail of fire to come every evening to a golden window of Ilbrec's house, and there he would shake himself till he would not leave sword on pillow, or shield on peg, or spear in rack, but they would come down on the heads of the people of the house; and whatever they ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... a few seeds and began to coax the bird, until it, in point of fact, performed various tricks, on the stage, clasping in its beak a mask ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... evening from an hole under the garden-steps; and was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed. But at last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, gave him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye. After this accident the creature languished ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... of his ship extricated himself with such address as to get clear, though only by a moment. From the velocity of their motion they struck against each other with such violence that they were both excessively injured by the shock; the beak, indeed, of one of them being broken off, the whole ship was ready to founder, which circumstance being observed, the ships of Brutus's fleet, which were nearest that station, attack them when in this disorder ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... quiet below. A woodpecker on a fir tree raps lightly and flies farther on and vanishes; it has hidden, but does not cease to tap with its beak, like a child when it has hidden and wishes to be sought for. Nearer sits a squirrel, holding a nut in its paws and gnawing it; its tail hangs over its eyes like the plume over a cuirassier's helmet: even though thus protected, it keeps glancing about; ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... of the bones are thickened, and the soft tissues of the terminal segments of the digits hypertrophied. The fingers come to resemble drum-sticks, and the thumb the clapper of a bell. The nails are convex, and incurved at their free ends, suggesting a resemblance to the beak of a parrot. There is also enlargement of the lower ends of the bones of the forearm and leg, and effusion into the wrist and ankle-joints. Skiagrams of the hands and feet show a deposit of new bone along the shafts of ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... said the youth, 'and your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet; Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak— Pray how did you manage ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... firing high explosive shells. They fired the guns backwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to speak, and rammed with the beak. That was the theory, you know, but they had never been fought. No one could tell exactly what was going to happen. And meanwhile I suppose it was very fine to go whirling through the air like a flight of ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the device of this ancient property, which was formerly called "Schwanstein", is represented in every possible manner and material in the adornment of the castle. Swans are pictured upon the armorial bearings at the entrance-gate; a bronze swan spouts water from its uplifted beak in the garden fountain; while below, upon the two lakes that enclose the park, groups of living swans are floating about, as if to testify to the abiding characteristics of the place. Within the building not only is the swan a prominent figure in the frescoed story, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... QUESTION.—Why does a toper—especially when "before the beak"—always say that he was "in drink," when he evidently means that the drink was in him? The only soaker on record who could rightly be said to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... of her standard, sprinkled by mendicants with holy water, she had had a dove painted, holding in its beak a scroll, whereon were written the words "in the name of the King of Heaven."[1176] These were the armorial bearings she had received from her Council. The emblem and the device seemed appropriate to her, since she proclaimed that God had sent her, and since ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... strange capers. The winged lion of Venice looked as if trying to fly away home; the Chinese dragon appeared to brandish his forked tail as he clawed at the Burmese peacock; the double-headed eagle of Russia pecked at the Turkish crescent with one beak, while the other seemed to be screaming to the English royal beast, "Come on and lend a paw." In the hurry of hoisting the Siamese elephant got turned upside down, and now danced gayly on his head, with the stars and stripes waving proudly over him. A green flag with ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... chase he was musing one day sorrowfully over his disappointed hopes, ashamed to go back to his village, to which he had never returned without success before, when, suddenly, a man of majestic presence stood before him. His nose was like the beak of an eagle, and his eyes resembled fires in a dark night. Strange feathers, of brilliant colors, were woven into his scalp-lock; a magnificent robe of skins depended from his shoulders; and in his hand he held a long spear, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... she—or, at least, like her—her full face displayed, her bosom uncovered, with her hair hanging loose, and with a purse of red velvet in her hands, while behind her a peacock leaned his beak over her shoulder, covering the wall with his immense plumage in ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... mouth parts prolonged into a sharp beak with which they puncture the skin or bark, instead of chewing the leaves, as do beetles. Flies, gnats, and other similar insects do not usually injure vegetation so much as do some other classes of insects, the principal damage being done to fruits; but they have been found to be the cause of ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... high-road, while horses, coachman, and carriage flew past in wild career. The lark rose up carolling from the field, twittering her morning lay over the coffin, and presently perched upon it, picking with her beak at the straw covering, as though she would tear it up. The lark rose up again, singing gaily, and I withdrew ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... the hunters for its whelps? For universally the love of animals for their offspring makes timid ones bold, and lazy ones energetic, and greedy ones unselfish. And so the bird in Homer, feeding its young "with its beak, with whatever it has captured, even though it goes ill with itself,"[50] nourishes its young at the cost of its own hunger, and when the food is near its maw abstains from it, and holds it tightly ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... row a goddess sits in the rain: her head is prolonged into that of a bird, holding a fish in its beak. The central picture shows Chac in his boat ferrying a woman across the water from the East. The third illustration depicts the familiar conflict between ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... plant, and whid no more of that [19] Budg a beak the crackmas & tip lowr with thy prat [20] If treyning thou dost feare, thou ner wilt foist a Ian, [21] Then mill, and wap and treine for me, [22] A gere ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... I shrieked, upstarting: "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... bare twig, far from the ground, feeling safer at that giddy height than nearer earth, preening pinions, polishing beak and uttering the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... untruthfully:—"Now, young hobstacle, clear out o' this! Boys ain't allowed on bridges;" and in another that of Michael Ragstroar, who said, "Don't you let the Company see you carryin' off their property. They'll rip you open as soon as look at you. You'll be took afore the Beak." Dave was not yet old enough to see what a very perverted view of legal process these words contained, but his blue eyes looked mistrustfully at the speaker as he watched him pass up the street towards the Wheatsheaf, swinging a ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... report concerning her uncle's health-"I met seven—there were neither more nor less; for seven is the best of numbers—seven snow-white doves, which all flew swiftly towards the right. The fairest of all came first, bearing in its beak a little basket which contained the power that will keep Antony's son away from us. Don't look at me in such amazement, you ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that there was a horny beak, like a parrot's, in the mouth, and that on the under side of the head was ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... him now in the green leaves, but where the sky was clear he saw a sudden, dark shadow against the blue. He sprang up in an instant and raised his rifle. But it was too late for the eagle to stop. The heavy figure with the tearing beak and claws swooped downward, and there was silence and terror among the green leaves. But before the eagle could clutch or rend, Henry's rifle spoke with unerring aim, and the body fell to ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "Keep that for the beak," said the policeman; "he is sure to believe it. Come, my bloke. I knew who was my bird the moment I clapped eyes on the two. 'Tain't his first job, gents, you take my word. We shall find his photo in some jail or other in time for ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... the heifer dead and bleeding fresh And sees fast by a butcher with an axe But will suspect 't was he that made the slaughter? Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest But may imagine how the bird was dead, Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak? Even so suspicious is ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... turned out to be a sort of glorified Dutch sea-going house-boat) that she was fired with sudden enthusiasm for our cruise. And the thing really is a delectable craft—stout, with a square-shouldered bow, and a high, perky nose of brass, standing up in the air as one sees the beak of a duck sometimes, half-sunk among its feathers and pointing upward. "Waterspin" (which means "water-spider") is the creature's name, and she is a brilliant emerald, lined and painted round her windows with an equally brilliant scarlet. This bold scheme of color would be no less than shocking ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... presence of an overlapping premaxillary beak bearing teeth that are slanted posteriorly requires that the mandible be drawn back in order to be depressed. Conversely, during closure, the jaw must be pulled forward to complete full adduction. The quadrate-articular ...
— The Adductor Muscles of the Jaw In Some Primitive Reptiles • Richard C. Fox
... philosophers and rulers. As you are a man of pleasure, you will not have forgotten how indiscriminate lovers are in their attachments; they love all, and turn blemishes into beauties. The snub-nosed youth is said to have a winning grace; the beak of another has a royal look; the featureless are faultless; the dark are manly, the fair angels; the sickly have a new term of endearment invented expressly for them, which is 'honey-pale.' Lovers ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the youth, "and your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet: Yet you eat all the goose, with the bones and the beak— Pray, how did you manage ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... good points," says Roth, "such as the blending of the two bell forms into the common handle, the happy tapering of the ornamentation into the Normian bird's beak; the increasing size of the side cups as they rise to correspond to the enlarged opening of the bell form; the truthfulness to nature in an essential like the bust of the Negro, all of which betoken a fair amount of artistic feeling. The craftsman ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Boulevards suddenly unveiled this spirit. They saw it such as it really was: the ridiculous nicknames "Big-beak," "Badinguet," vanished; they saw the bandit, they saw the true contraffatto ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... I; 'I saw them all at the council in the Emperor's tent. There is Ney with the red head. And there is Lefebvre with his singular mouth, and Bernadotte with the beak of ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... king was William III.?" inquired another examiner. "He had an aquiline nose, sir," said a boy. "What does that mean?" said the examiner. "It means," answered the boy, "that William III.'s nose was turned up at the point like the beak of an eagle!" "What right had William to the English throne?" continued the examiner, changing his ground. "No right under heaven," was the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... day. This bird men see often flying in those countries; and he is not much more than an eagle. And he hath a crest of feathers upon his head greater than the peacock hath. And his neck is yellow, after the color of an orial, that is a stone well shining. And his beak is colored blue, and his wings are of purple color, and his tail is yellow and red. And he is a full fair bird to look upon against the sun; for he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... a duck quacked to them, "You thieving folks, who bade you go to my nut-hill? Well, you shall suffer for it!" and ran with open beak at the cock. But the cock also was not idle, and fell boldly on the duck, and at last wounded her so with his spurs that she also begged for mercy, and willingly let herself be harnessed to the carriage as a punishment. The ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... that could be seen of his body—legs, arms and chest—was as hairy as the skin of an ape; his hands and feet were crooked, like the claws of a tiger. As to his visage, nothing more fantastic and frightful could be imagined. Amid a thick, bristling beard, a nose like an owl's beak and a mouth whose corners were drawn by a wild-beast-like rictus were just discernible. The eyes were half hidden by his thick, bushy, curly hair. Each curl ended in a spiral, pointed and twisted like a gimlet, and on peering ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... perches on the lower boughs of the trees, and fishes in the ponds. A small-winged woodpecker, and a large red-headed species, climb up and down the trees in sequestered places, and a thrush with a yellow beak and black head utters a sweet note among the bamboo groves and thickets; while owls, falcons, eagles and other ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... nobles was sometimes seen at Christmas and other festive seasons a peacock pie, but so costly was the dish that it was only the very wealthy who could face such extravagance. At one end of the pie the peacock's head, in all its plumage and with beak richly gilt, appeared above the crust, while at the other end the tail with feathers outspread made a brave show. The dish, however, was regarded more in the light of a superb ornament to the table, for it was ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... petted bird has a crooked beak And eyes like live coals set in its head, A gray breast dappled with glowing red— DABBLED—not dappled, I should have said, From a fancy it has of which I ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... in the Zoo To a white cockatoo: "Your beak is uncommonly strong!" Said the white cockatoo To the ape in the Zoo, "And your tail is ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... more pronounced colours than female robins. The beak is yellower, the breast is brighter, the back and the top of the head are darker. Robins both run and hop. The sense of sight of the robin is very acute, but its sense of hearing is even more keen. The bird may be observed turning its head ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... too perfect for truth of nature. Hence his countenance, swarthy and strongly marked with the Italian origin indicated by his name, had an expression of singular rigidity, to which his features, now become angular, his piercing glance, and his nose like the beak of a bird of prey, did not afford ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... seemed somewhat undecided as to what to do. Like the rest of her class she was fitted at the bow with a powerful beak or ram, just level with the surface of the water, the office of which was to pierce an enemy's ship about the water-line and so cause such a serious leak as to effectually distract the attention of the defenders. But in the present case there appeared to be some hesitation ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... captured in the royal chase, near the Prado, the king (Philip III.) gave orders to Pantoja to paint its likeness, which he did with such truthfulness that the royal bird, on seeing it, mistook it for a real eagle, and attacked the picture with such impetuosity that he tore it in pieces with his beak and talons before they could secure him. The indignant bird was then tied more carefully, and the portrait ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... towards the poor, hospitable creature who presented it. Still I hesitated, till he said, "Take it, Miss, and a thousand welcomes,—take it, agrah, from poor Pat." I took it with infinite delight; and holding it in my claws, and peeling it with my beak, began to mutter "Poor Pat! poor Pat!" "Oh, musha, musha! oh, by the powers!" He cried, "but that's a great bird, any how—just like a Christian—look here, boys." A crowd now gathered round my cage, and several exclamations, which recalled my old friends of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... them well, let them to their Kennel, and wash their Feet with Beer and Butter, or some such thing, and pick and search their Cleys, for Thorns, Stubs, or the like: If it is in Winter, let a Fire be made, and let them beak and stretch themselves for an hour or so at the fire, and suffer them to lick, pick, and trim themselves; hereby to prevent the Diseases incident to them, upon sudden Cooling, as the Mange, Itch, ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... they Left, the Lych to devour, The Sallow kite and the Swart raven, Horny of beak,— and Him, the dusk-coated, The white-afted Erne, the corse to Enjoy, The Greedy war-hawk, and that Grey beast, The Wolf of the Wood. No such Woeful slaughter Aye on this Island Ever hath been, By edge of the Sword, as book Sayeth, Writers ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... cannot send the goat away." Then an old man tried his luck, with no better success. At last a little bird came by and promised for three bushels of millet to drive the goat away. When the goat made its usual declaration, the little bird replied: "And I with my beak will peck your brains out." The goat was frightened and ran away, and the boy had to pay the little ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... plentiful, and I quickly discovered that they might also aptly be termed limpet-pickers, for they seemed to take these shell fish as their staple food. The modus operandi of feeding is to pounce down upon a rock which the receding tide has left bare, and with a single sharp blow with its beak, detach a limpet, and turning it mouth upward, pick out the fish at its leisure. If it failed to detach the limpet at once it would go on to another, knowing that when once disturbed the limpet requires great force to detach it. Oysters lie in deep waters where they ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... Cray-fish. ASTACUS QUINQUE-CARINATUS, t. 3. f. 3.—Carapace smooth, rather convex, and with three keels above; the beak, longly produced, ending in a spine, simple on the side and produced into a keel on each side behind; the central caudal lobe rather narrow, indistinctly divided in half, and like the other lobes flexile at the end, the lateral lobes with a central keel ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... on his beak, The airy assassin disarming, Unspurred him, and rendered him weak, By blunting ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... lookout for tricks. I am told that a live albatross standing on the deck of the ship is a very handsome bird. His back is white, his wings are brown, he has a fine head, carries himself with great dignity, and has a grand eye and countenance. The bird has a pink beak and pretty streaks of a rose color on the cheeks. After death these colors disappear, and are not to be seen in the stuffed specimens such as are found in museums. A good-sized albatross weighs about twenty pounds, though, as before stated, he looks ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the speaker and looked full upon the beak nose, cleft cheek and bristling red moustache of an old friend. "Good Lord, The Beachcomber!" I breathed. He started, peered at me and growled, "Captain Dawnay-Devenish, if it's all the same ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... with three daughters peered alternately into the guide book, and out of the loophole in the awning, in evident terror lest something they ought to see should slip by them. Escaping from the jam, we made our way to the bow, carrying stools, umbrellas, and books, and there, on the very beak of all things, we had a fine view. Duly and dutifully we admired Bingen, Cob-lentz, Ehrenbreitstein, Bonn, Drachenfels, and all the other celebrities, and read Childe Harold on the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... attempt at self-justification repeated that she was a holy terror, and sank his pick into her grave up to the handle. At that moment a raven, which had silently settled upon a branch of the blasted tree above his head, solemnly snapped its beak and uttered its mind about the matter ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... periods. One pet toad is mentioned by a Mr. Arscott as having attained, to his knowledge, the age of thirty-six years; and a greater age still might have been recorded of this specimen, but for the untoward treatment it sustained at the hands, or rather beak, of a tame raven. In all probability it may be safely assumed that, when the conditions of life are favorable, these creatures may attain a highly venerable age—regarding the lapse of time from a purely human and interested ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... sea, and again over the sea; thou shalt know grief and hardship and losses, and the dove shall be driven from its nest. And the dove's heart shall become like the eagle's, that flies alone, and fleshes her beak in the slain. Beat on, though the poor wings be bruised by the tempest, and the breast be sore, and the heart sink; beat on against the wind, and seek no shelter till thou find thy resting-place at last. The time will ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... at his right hand was an immense bird, whose body seemed almost as big as that of a horse. Its wide-open, curving beak was set with rows of pointed teeth, and the talons held against its breast and turned threateningly outward were more powerful and dreadful ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... you should go to the Zoo. It is a curious creature, with its great beak ending in a hook. . . . It eats all day long. . . . Well, Mademoiselle Artemise, etc. . ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... would speak of him as the Red Boatman. But he could not be depended on, for he was often absent. His boat was of a curious shape, not like any other boat seen on the Arun. Its prow was curved like a bird's beak. And when folk wished to go across to the Amberley flats that lie under the splendid shell which was once a castle, Harding would carry them, if he was there and neither too busy nor too surly. And when they asked the fee he ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... institution was a brisk, nervous sort of person, a shrewd fellow, and given to much flourishing with a pen, which was to him much mightier than any sword. He could whirl off a scroll-winged eagle on a blank sheet of foolscap, in a twinkling—a royal bird, with a banner in his beak, on which was inscribed "Go to —— college," and which the king of birds was bearing towards the sun for advertising purposes. He could also add a column of figures with wonderful rapidity, and occasional accuracy! He was a believer in lightning methods and processes ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... a lightning-like movement, it turned, for the fraction of a second, toward us, and was instantly averted again. It made my nerves creep to look at it. The nose was immense, resembling a huge curved beak, and the eyes, as black and glittering as jet, were roofed with shaggy brows, and seemed capable of ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... cautiously and see an animal about the size of a large cat, with bright black and white markings, lying harmlessly on a pile of harness. It has no sting, no formidable claws or beak, and yet it is able to keep any number of men from disturbing it while it chooses to lie on their possessions. No god could receive more respect from his believers. It is after tea-time when you, creeping to report, ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... he had been allowed to march about for many years, unreproved, in Aunt Katharine's stable-yard. Maisie had been very much afraid of him in the days when she wore socks, for he had a way of digging at her little bare legs with his cruel beak whenever he could get near her. She was not frightened of him now that she was older, especially when Dennis was with her, but still she did not trust him, and took care this morning not to cross his path on her way to ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... then we had the blue-winged teal, a maroon-red duck which ranges from Patagonia to California; the ringed teal, with salmon-coloured breast and velvet-black collar; the Brazilian teal, a lovely olive-brown and velvet-black duck, with crimson beak and legs. There were two pintails, one of which was the most abundant species in the country; also a widgeon, a lake duck, a shoveller duck, with red plumage, grey head and neck, and blue wings; and two species of the long-legged whistling or tree duck. Another common species was the rosy-billed ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... walks and breathes His active body, and in fury wreathes His comely crest, and often with a sound, He whets his angry beak upon the ground. This done, they meet, not like that coward breed Of Aesop; these can better fight than feed: They scorn the dunghill; 'tis their only prize TO DIG FOR PEARLS ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Bearing an eagle's nest: and thro' the tree Rush'd ever a rainy wind, and thro' the wind Pierced ever a child's cry: and crag and tree Scaling, Sir Lancelot from the perilous nest, This ruby necklace thrice around her neck, And all unscarr'd from beak or talon, brought A maiden babe; which Arthur pitying took, Then gave it to his Queen to rear: the Queen But coldly acquiescing, in her white arms Received, and after loved it tenderly, And named it Nestling; so forgot herself A moment, and her cares; till that young life Being smitten in mid-heaven ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... turkey caught them up at last, And read them both a lecture; And how he served them with his beak, ...
— Naughty Puppies • Anonymous
... disposed. Before entering I looked above the door, and perceived that the double eagles carved there are reversed. Instead of having body to body, and wings and beaks pointed outwards, as in the arms of Austria and Russia, the bodies are separated, and beak looks inward to beak. ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... well armed for battle and plunder. The beak is powerful, and bent like a hook, with edges as sharp as a knife. The feet are furnished with four terrible toes, which have long and sharp nails, called talons. The eyes are piercing, and ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... jet black, its curving legs, three to a side, chrome yellow. The round head ended in a sharp beak and it had large, many-faceted eyes. The wings, which lazily tested the air, were black and touched ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... forth beside the snake's body, and turned it over with his beak. Finally he spread his wings and began to ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... snob (somewhere he defends the snob in an essay): rich food ("half-mourning" [artichoke hearts and truffles], "filet of reindeer," a cygnet in its plumage bearing an orchid in its beak, "heron's eggs whipped with wine into an amber foam," "mashed grasshoppers baked in saffron"), rich clothes, rich people interest him. There is no poverty in his books. His creatures do not toil. They cut coupons ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... had taken me in hand, and went on asking question after question; the more we parleyed the less we understood each other, until at last we both grew angry, and I actually thought the Signor would have liked to peck me with his hooked beak, until the maids, who had been listening to our confusion of tongues, laughed heartily at us. I put down my knife and fork and went out of doors; for in this strange land I, with my German tongue, seemed to have sunk down fathoms deep into the sea, where all sorts of unfamiliar, crawling creatures ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... central tower without transepts. A small S. chantry projects from the nave. Features to be noted are: (1) the Norm, doorway mentioned above, a little to the right of main entrance. The capitals are richly carved, and support an arch ornamented with deeply cut chevron and grotesque bird's beak mouldings. The tympanum bears in relief the curious device of some winged creatures devouring a tree. Above is a roundheaded niche containing the figure of our Lord, with hand uplifted in blessing. (2) Tub-shaped Norm. font, bearing inscription, Hoc fontis ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... As two lions [1806] on either side of a slain deer spring at one another in fury, and there is a fearful snarling and a clashing also of teeth—like vultures with crooked talons and hooked beak that fight and scream aloud on a high rock over a mountain goat or fat wild-deer which some active man has shot with an arrow from the string, and himself has wandered away elsewhere, not knowing the place; but they quickly mark it and vehemently do keen battle about it—like these they ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... was enough to last for twenty-nine days, when they hoped to reach Timor. That afternoon some noddies came so near the boat that one was caught. These birds are about the size of a small pigeon; it was divided into eighteen parts and given by lot. The men were much amused when they saw the beak and claws fall to the lot of the captain. The bird was eaten, bones and all, with ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... set to, and tried to spread the clothes on the bed with her beak; but as fast as she pulled them up one side, they slipped off the other, and at last she gave ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... look in his restless, wild-animal eyes, smoky like the rest of him, and a surliness about his long, high-ridged nose which came down over his mustache like a beak. He wore a cloth cap with ear flaps, and they were down, although the heat of summer still made the September air lively enough for one with blood beneath his skin. He regaled himself with fierce defiance, like a captive eagle, and had no word ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... took George round the back of the hill and they mounted the crest from the reverse side. They came over it and there at their very feet lay one of George's best bullocks, with tongue protruded, breathing his last gasp. A crow of the country was perched on his ribs, digging his thick beak into a hole he had made in his ribs, and another was picking out one of his eyes. The birds rose heavily, clogged and swelling with gore. George's eyes flashed, his gun went up to his shoulder, and Jacky saw the brown barrel rise slowly for a moment as it followed ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... might as well have held a wildcat, or captured with his bare hands a wild eagle, strong of talon and beak. She tore and ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... to Montevideo no incident occurred, but upon the Plata, during a storm, the Etoile was run down by a Spanish vessel, which broke her bowsprit, her beak head, and much of her rigging. The damages and the shock increased the leak of the ship, and forced her to return to Encenada de Baragan, where repairs were more easily managed than at Montevideo. It was impossible therefore to leave the river ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open, Like some iron door; To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base And reach your skinny little neck And take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage, Alone, small insect, Tiny bright-eye, ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... his knife, and by a superhuman effort succeeded, at the moment the rope was giving way, in catching hold of it with his right hand above the cut made by the beak of the bird. But, powerfully as he held it in his iron grasp, he could feel it ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... hailstones were so large and so hard that neither man nor beast could live through that storm, for they would have slain them, so fiercely did they beat. And the way that I escaped was this. I placed the beak of my shield over the head and neck of my horse, while I held the upper part over my own head. Thus did we withstand the storm, though the flanks of my horse ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... decomposition of crystalline rocks. Mounting to a high llano, we shot a pair of curious birds, which looked like water-birds, but were living in a dry place and were able to run with great speed. They were of the size of a hen, and had a long beak, long legs and four flat though not webbed toes. At the end of this high llano, we passed the Hacienda of Agua Blanca, a property belonging to the jefe of Juchitan. From here, we descended rapidly over a poor road, coming ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... with much apparent difficulty, drew out its crimsoned head, and, after eyeing us for a moment as if stupefied, arose lazily from the body upon which it had been feasting, and, flying directly above our deck, hovered there a while with a portion of clotted and liver-like substance in its beak. The horrid morsel dropped at length with a sullen splash immediately at the feet of Parker. May God forgive me, but now, for the first time, there flashed through my mind a thought, a thought which I will not mention, and I felt myself making a step ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... weak, Intolerant yet self-distrusting, There could not well have been a "beak" Less fitted for the nice adjusting Of his peculiar point of view To that of forty-odd years later, Less eager to acclaim the New, Less apt for Georgian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... 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 of the gull tribe, about twenty inches in length. The peculiarity of their beak consists in the lower mandible being considerably longer than the other into which it shuts. It is of an orange-red at the base, and deepens into black at the tip. To prevent the water rushing into its throat as it skims the surface with its beak, the bird is provided with a very small gullet. ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... was by birth an Italian of very low degree; a man of crouched stature, and of an uncomely physiognomy, being yellow-skinned and black-haired, with a beak-nose, and little quick eyes of a free and familiar glance, but shrewd withal, and possessed of a pleasant way of winning facetiously on the ladies, to the which his singular skill in all manner of melodious music helped not a little; so that ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... and, as soon as they had kissed her, her father enquired after poor Cherry. "He is very well," said Nancy, a little confused, and then ran to fetch him some seed and water. Alas! poor little Cherry was no more; he was lying upon his back, with his wings spread, and his beak open. Nancy screamed out, and wrung her hands, when all the family ran to her, and were witnesses of ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... on being summoned, brought in first some dry biscuits in deep tin boxes, those crisp, insipid English cakes which seem to have been made for a parrot's beak, and soldered into metal cases for a voyage round the world. Next she fetched some little gray linen doilies, folded square, those tea-napkins which in thrifty families never get washed. A third time she came in with the sugar basin and cups; then she departed ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... of some droll old court officer in an illustrated nursery story-book, and yet all these fat features instinct with meaning, the fat lips curved and compressed, the nose combining somehow the dignity of a beak with the good nature of a bottle, and the very double chin with an air of intelligence and insight. And all these portraits are so pat and telling, and look at you so spiritedly from the walls, that, compared with the sort of living people one sees about the ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... last. The thing I had wished for in my boat, all those months ago, was a new flag. And here was the flag, made for me in secret by Mary's own hand! The ground was green silk, with a dove embroidered on it in white, carrying in its beak the typical olive-branch, wrought in gold thread. The work was the tremulous, uncertain work of a child's fingers. But how faithfully my little darling had remembered my wish! how patiently she had plied the needle over the traced lines of the pattern! how industriously she ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... Eastern idea. The Hindu Angelina might be vacuous, vain, papilionaceous, silly, or even a mere doll, but if her hair hung down "like the tail of a Tartary cow," [96] if her eyes were "like the stones of unripe mangoes," and her nose resembled the beak of a parrot, the Hindu Edwin was more than satisfied. Dr. Johnson's "unidead girl" would have done as well ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... grace 1859, he is fifty-three years of age. He presents the appearance of a well-preserved man. His frame is slight and robust, and his constitution is that of a mountaineer. The breadth of his forehead, the brilliancy of his eyes, his beak-like nose, and all the upper part of his face inspire a certain awe. His countenance, of almost Moorish hue, is at times lit up by flashes of intellect. But his heavy jaw, his long fang-like teeth, and his thick lips ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... hen for twenty-two days, instead of eating it in the shell as we might have done, and we view it as a matter of course. Yet we do not say here that the bird may not have come down the conjuror's sleeve, or the hen may not have brought it from under her wing. It was really in the egg, and its own beak tapped against the shell from ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... hollowed out in the snow a burrow with two entrances. Two of these birds having recognised his presence, one entered one hole in order to dislodge the hare, the other awaited him at the other opening to batter his head with blows from his beak and kill him before he had time to gain presence ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... told her (so as to give her no further excuse for hanging about me) that in future she was to take her orders from Price—an announcement which caused my maid to stand several inches taller in her shoes, and sent the housekeeper hopping downstairs with her beak in the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... about at the bottom?" I see; it is a water-scorpion, a very common insect in these drains on the moors,—indeed, it is common everywhere; let us catch him and take him home for examination. He is a queer-looking creature, with a small head and pointed beak; his forearms are something like lobster's claws; his prevailing colour blackish-brown, like the mud upon which he crawls; his body is very flat, and ends in two long stick-like projections; underneath these horny covers of the creature may be seen his two wings. He is an aquatic murderer; ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... After the builder has fastened many lines to opposite twigs, their ends hanging free, she proceeds to span the little gulf by weaving them together. She stands with her claws clasped one to each side, and uses her beak industriously, looping up and fastening the loose ends. I have stood in the road under the nest looking straight up till my head swam, trying to make out just how she did it, but all I could see was the bird standing astride the chasm she was trying to bridge, and busy with the hanging strings. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... would have filled her mind for a long time, but she was interrupted by the dismal croaking of a raven overhead. Lifting her eyes, she saw in the dim light a large raven on the point of swallowing a frog which it held in its beak. 'Though I have no hope of help for myself,' she said, 'I will not let this unfortunate frog die, if I can save it; though our lots are so different, its sufferings are quite as great as mine.' She picked up the first stick which came to hand, and made the raven let go its prey. ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... beasts,—closest to his feet the irredeemable boar; then lion and bear, tiger, unicorn, and fiery dragon closest to his head, the flames of its mouth mingling with his breath as he sings. The audient eagle, alas! has lost the beak, and is only recognizable by his proud holding of himself; the duck, sleepily delighted after muddy dinner, close to his shoulder, is a true conquest. Hoopoe, or indefinite bird of crested race, behind; of the other three no clear certainty. The leafage throughout such as only Luca ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... had taken from an old woman, candles at two francs each, a very reasonable price, as she repeatedly said. And on being paid, the old creature, who had an angular face, covetous eyes, and a nose like the beak of a bird of prey, returned profuse and mellifluous thanks: "May Our Lady of Lourdes bless you, my beautiful young lady! May she cure you of your complaints, you and yours!" This enlivened them again, and they set out once more, all three laughing, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... branch of the tree at which Mudge and several others were looking up. Taking out his boomerang, he stepped a few paces back; then away it flew till it took a course upwards and penetrated amid the boughs, and the next instant down came a large bird, with a black head and a peculiarly strong beak. ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... up the grave with the earth they had turned up, they flew away, but returned in a few minutes, bringing with them the bird that had committed the murder, one holding one of its wings in its beak, and the other one of its legs; the criminal all the while crying out in a doleful manner, and struggling to escape. They carried it to the grave of the bird which it had lately sacrificed to its rage, and there killed it in just ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... follow the girls about, and stalk up to the house of their own accord to be fed, their food always being placed in water, as they never feed by picking upon the ground, for which, indeed, the peculiar construction of their beak is entirely unfitted. They were perfectly fearless of the dogs, which, on their part, were too well trained to touch them; and their funny way and their extreme tameness were a source of constant amusement to ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... a time, when all the earth was flooded, two birds were hanging above the water. They were clinging to the sky with their beaks. The larger bird was gray with a long tail and beak, but the smaller one was the tiny bird that builds a nest shaped like an olla, with only a very small opening at the top. The birds were tired and frightened. The larger one cried and cried, but the little bird held on tight and said, "Don't cry. I 'm littler than you are, ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... small hand, warm, and rather capable-looking. Miriam watched. He held the corn to the hen. The bird eyed it with her hard, bright eye, and suddenly made a peck into his hand. He started, and laughed. "Rap, rap, rap!" went the bird's beak in his palm. He laughed again, and ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... about her, she paddled through the slush towards the gate, supremely disregarding the fact that a gander, having nerved himself and his harem to the charge, had caught the ragged skirt of her dress in his beak, and being too angry to let go, was being whirled out of the yard in ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... that of an old man, so old that the head was quite bald and the wrinkled face entirely devoid of hair; but the deeply sunken eyes glowed like those of a leopard in the dark, the forehead was broad and high, the nose thin and crooked like the beak of an eagle, the mouth a mere straight slit, and the thin lips were drawn back in a sort of incipient snarl. But it was the expression of the face that particularly arrested my attention, for never before had I beheld ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... hostilities on his part were about to be opened, he, as if just for fun, dropped his own dear brown self on the branch below him, flapped his wings, and soon perching himself on a tree a little further off, gravely re-opened his beak and ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... the barn-yard is never received with great cordiality. He must win his place and his power with his beak and his spurs. We all of us had enough to do before this fellow came along. We are a little jealous of him, we are all uneasier because he is about, and he has done so well at our games, now that he has indeed hung up philosophy, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... the Jewish types in England. There is (1) the sallow Jew with a beak; (2) the same without a beak; (3) the "hammy" Jew, with pink face like a cochon-a-lait. The Florentine type, with fair hair and beautiful clear face, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... were all quiet, peaceful people who dreaded altercation; it made our hearts beat too fast. Taking it altogether, we felt very much as if some great, overgrown bird of another species had gotten into our village nest, and we were in the midst of an awful commotion of strange wings and beak. Still we agreed that Mrs. ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... painted in flat color, without especial sheen or iridescence, and when I finally analyzed it, I found it to be a delicate calamine blue. It actually had the appearance of a too strong color, as when a glistening surface reflects the sun. From beak to tail it threw off this glowing hue, except for its chin and throat, which were a limpid amaranth purple; and the effect on the excited rods and cones in one's eyes was like the power of great music or some majestic passage in the Bible. You, who think my ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... truth I tell thee, Kai, that there is neither man nor beast that could endure that shower and live. For not one of those hailstones would be stopped either by the flesh, or by the skin, until it had reached the bone. I turned my horse's flanks towards the shower, and placed the beak of my shield over his head and neck, while I held the upper part of it over my own head. And thus I withstood the shower. When I looked on the tree, there was not a single leaf upon it, and then the sky became clear; ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... day was gone, and the night so near, that in the shadows of the tree all was dusky and dim. But there was still light enough to discover that in a niche of the tree sat a huge horned owl, with green spectacles on his beak, and a book in one foot. He took no heed of the intruders, but kept muttering to himself. And what do you think the owl was saying? I will tell you. He was talking about the book that he held ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... the eyes, pits partially filled with dried ointments of a bituminous color. The monarch had yielded his life in its full ripeness, for the white hair and beard still adhered in stiffened plaits to the skull, cheeks, and chin. The nose alone was natural; it stood up thin and hooked, like the beak of an eagle. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... contentment, and then started up in remembrance of the occasion of our being in this place as the shadow of Mother Borton fell across the table. Her keen eyes fixed on me and her sharp beak nodding toward me gave her the uncanny aspect of a bird of prey, and I felt a sinking of courage as ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
