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Quadruped   Listen
Quadruped

adjective
1.
Having four feet.  Synonyms: four-footed, quadrupedal.






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"Quadruped" Quotes from Famous Books



... firmness. The sight of the cavaliers approaching with their silken banners, their glittering armor, and bestride their magnificent steeds, must have been astounding in the highest degree to one who had never seen a quadruped larger than a dog. But the proud chief assumed an air ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... were made vocal with the screams of wild geese, still pouring along in their hurried flight to the south, to escape the elemental foe behind, like the rapidly succeeding detachments of some retreating army, yet not a living creature, biped or quadruped, was anywhere to be heard or seen in the forest beneath. All seemed to have instinctively shrunk away and fled, as from the presence of some impending evil, to their dens and coverts, there to await, cowering and silent, the dreaded outbreak. Slowly, but steadily, the lurid storm-clouds ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... said the Doctor. "I'm the talking man here. Yes! gentlemen," addressing the attentive cowboys, "I can cure anything that touches the ground—biped, quadruped, or centipede—glanders, botts, greased hoofs, heaves, blind staggers, it makes no odds. My universal, self-acting, double compound elixir of equestrian ointment will perform a cure in each and every case. It is cheap! It is sure! It is patented! It is the best, and it is here. You may roll ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... numerous concomitant changes necessitated by such developments as that of the long neck of the giraffe. Darwin, however, on the contrary, holds that natural selection alone "would have sufficed for the production of this remarkable quadruped."[8] He is surprised at Mr. Spencer's view that natural selection can do so little in modifying the higher animals. Thus one of the chief arguments with which Mr. Spencer supports his theory is so poorly founded as to be rejected by a far ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... a donkey going down the road The other day; a boy was on his back, Who on the long-eared quadruped bestowed, With a stout cudgel, many a hearty thwack; But lazier and lazier grew the beast, Until he dwindled to a step so slow That I felt sure 'twould take him, at the least, Full half-an-hour ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... stick to loosen the earth, and that is afterwards scooped up by the fingers of the left hand. Their withered arms and hands, covered with earth by digging and scraping after food, resemble, as they advance in years, the limbs and claws of a quadruped more than those of a human being. In stiff soils, this operation of digging can only be performed when the earth is moist, but in loose sandy soils it may be always done, and, on this account, the visits of the natives to different spots are regulated by the season ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... the insect are, however, of a nature altogether different from the apparently analogous organs which the bird uses in flight. The wings of the bird are merely altered fore-legs. Lift up the front extremities of a quadruped, keep them asunder at their origins by bony props, fit them with freer motions and stronger muscles, and cover them with feathers, and they become wings in every essential particular. In the insect, however, the case is altogether ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... accompanied by two youths in tunics, completed the group. An inscription informed us that this was the first elephant which had ever visited Teutschland, and that the inn derived its name from the fact of the august quadruped sleeping there on its journey, which took place in the sixteenth century. The worthy landlord had also ordered a fresco to be painted on his inn to the honor of the Virgin. She was depicted standing upon the crescent moon, and her aid was invoked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... his bungalow. There seemed nothing strange to either of us that he should requisition my services or that I should cheerfully obey. I helped him bandage his ankle, and we set out, I his crutch, the two of us making up a sort of limping quadruped, along the winding lane toward the cliffs and ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... parties is shown in the debates, newspapers, and pamphlets of the time. The Federalists, as Mr. Clay observed in one of his speeches, compared Napoleon to "every monster and beast, from that mentioned in the Revelation down to the most insignificant quadruped." The Republicans, on the contrary, spoke of him always with moderation and decency, sometimes with commendation, and occasionally he was toasted at their public dinners with enthusiasm. Mr. Clay himself, while lamenting his enormous power and the suspension of ancient nationalities, always ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... sight and hearing as I, if unlearned in those things, might be unable wholly to reject. But if there were a thousand flies, all buzzing, to appearance, about the great creature; and, to a fly, declaring, each one for himself, that he was bigger than the quadruped; and all giving different and frequently contradictory reasons; and each one despising and opposing the reasons of the others—I should feel quite at my ease. I should certainly say, My little friends, the case of each one of you is destroyed by the rest. I intend to show flies ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... muscles and ligaments of the spine, and to increase the mobility of the column. To take the weight of the body off the spine, and to render both ends of the column mobile, these exercises are carried out in the "all-fours" attitude, the patient crawling in imitation of a quadruped, that is, in such a way that the hand and knee of one side are approximated, while those of the other side are separated; in other words, the hand and knee of one side should not move forward simultaneously (Fig. 230). With each step the spine is curved laterally, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... possible form above our heads, many hanging down straight to the ground, while numberless curious air-plants hung suspended from the branches. Now and then gaily-plumaged birds were seen flitting amid the thick shade; but we were surprised at the paucity of animal life which existed. Not a quadruped was to be seen. A few monkeys and parrots were occasionally heard, though rarely caught sight of. We had numerous streams to cross; often, indeed, the same stream to cross several times. Frequently the passage was almost as dangerous as that I have ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... Zimmerman and his senses, he looked down and beheld the corniferous quadruped gamboling playfully round his ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... is art, truth, or sense to fuse a cow, a horse, and a critic into one undistinguishable quadruped, with six legs, then it will be art to melt an ash, an elm, and a lime, things that differ more than quadrupeds, into what you call abstract trees, that any man who has seen a tree, as well as looked at one, would call drunken stinging-nettles. You, who never look at nature, how can you judge ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade

... on her hands and feet like a quadruped, and her lover mounts her like a bull, it is called the "congress of a cow." At this time everything that is ordinarily done on the bosom should be done on ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana

... amiss. Be it remembered, however, how long they had been on salt provisions, and that the South Sea Islands, though pleasant in many respects, produced but little solid food—no beef, mutton, or flesh of any quadruped but pigs, and those in not very great plenty—while New Zealand gave ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... migrate to southern latitudes when the severer cold and depth of snow prevents them from obtaining the moss and lichens on which they feed. The little Polar hare ranges round the Arctic Circle; but there is one animal, the musk-ox, which, being truly an Arctic quadruped, is unknown either in Asia or Europe, and therefore ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... caught the ball must answer before he finishes counting ten. If "earth" was called he must name some quadruped found therein; if "water," some fish must be named, or "air," the name of some bird; but if "fire" was called he ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann

... sylvan toils, (Who haply now without the kennel's mound Crops the rank mead, and listening hears with joy The cheering cry, that morn and eve salutes His raptured sense) a wretched victim falls. Unhappy quadruped! no more, alas! Shall thy fond master with his voice applaud Thy gentleness, thy speed; or with his hand Stroke thy soft dappled sides, as he each day Visits thy stall, well pleased; no more shalt thou 250 With sprightly neighings, to the winding horn And the loud opening pack in concert ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... country that it was impossible to take a sheep across it for the purpose, when some youths, recollecting that the Greek word melon signified both sheep and an apple, stuck wooden pegs into the fruit to represent legs, and brought this vegetable quadruped as a substitute for the usual offering. After this date, the apple was considered as ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... miles out in the "campo." He rarely visited the capital, except on matters of business. For a business he had; this of somewhat unusual character. It consisted chiefly in the produce of his gun and insect-net. Many a rare specimen of bird and quadruped, butterfly and beetle, captured and preserved by Ludwig Halberger, at this day adorns the public museums of Prussia and other European countries. But for the dispatch and shipment of these he would never have ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... this distinction. There is no question that the farmer's best friend is the hog. He will do more for him and ask less of him than any other animal. All he asks is to be born. That is enough for this non-ruminant quadruped, who can find his living in the earth, the roadside ditch, or the forest, and who, out of a supply of grass, roots, or mast, can furnish ham and bacon to the king's taste and the poor man's maintenance. The half-wild ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... conscientious delusion that food for the entire army depended upon his private exertions. I respected this style of mule; and, had I possessed a juicy cabbage, would have pressed it upon him, with thanks for his excellent example. The histrionic mule was a melodramatic quadruped, prone to startling humanity by erratic leaps, and wild plunges, much shaking of his stubborn head, and lashing out of his vicious heels; now and then falling flat, and apparently dying a la Forrest; a gasp—a squirm—a flop, and so on, till the street was well blocked up, the drivers all ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... bulls, not worth killing. The snow lay fifteen inches deep, and made the travelling grievously painful and toilsome. At length they came to an immense plain, where no vestige of timber was to be seen, not a single quadruped to enliven the desolate landscape. Here, then, their hearts failed them, and they held another consultation. The width of the river, which was nearly a mile, its extreme shallowness, the frequency of quicksands, and various other ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... who has left me, instead of the classical stuffed crocodile, a trained horse which he had just taken from an insolvent circus. I mounted the noble animal to go to the Bois, but at the Place de la Concorde he began to waltz around it, and I was obliged to get rid of this dancing quadruped at a considerable loss. So your contribution to La Guepe would have to be gratuitous, like those of all the rest. You will give me the credit of having saluted you first of all, my dear Violette, by ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... the angler—Green river, just at hand, offers such "store of fish," as father Walton or his son and disciple Cotton, were they alive again, would love to meditate and angle in!—and the woods! Capt. Scott or Christopher North himself, might grow weary of the sight of game, winged or quadruped. ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt

... talents—that I should do this reluctantly. I, besides, am so attached to the very name of Mary, that as Johnson once said, 'If you called a dog Harvey, I should love him;' so, if you were to call a female of the same species 'Mary,' I should love it better than others (biped or quadruped) of the same sex with a different appellation. She was an extraordinary woman: she could translate Epictetus, and yet write a song worthy of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... into queer mistakes sometimes. Two or three times, when sitting or lying still in the woods watching for birds, my head has been mistaken for a rat or squirrel, or some other furry quadruped, by owls, which swooped and brushed me with their wings, and once left the marks of their claws, ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... "The soft-hoofed semi-quadruped recently captured was subjected to the art of our distinguished man-tamer in presence of a numerous assembly. The animal was led in by two stout ponies, closely confined by straps to prevent his sudden and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... into the water. It was not unlike the mink in form, but several times larger. It swam with a swift movement of its forefeet, while its hind legs, stretched out behind with the tail, twisted powerfully, like a big sculling oar. Its method, indeed, combined the advantages of that of the quadruped and that of the fish. The trout saw at once that here was a foe to be dreaded, and he lay quite still against a stone, trusting to escape the ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... dinosaur (extinct); snake, serpent, viper, eft; asp, aspick^. [amphibians] frog, toad. [fishes] trout, bass, tuna, muskelunge, sailfish, sardine, mackerel. [insects] ant, mosquito, bee, honeybee. [arthropods] tardigrade, spider. [classification by number of feet] biped, quadruped; [web-footed animal] webfoot. flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae [Lat.]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock^, duck, grouse, plover, rail, snipe. [domesticated mammals] horse &c (beast of burden) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... youthful ramble—perhaps almost too far, unless one could manage to get a lift in a little yellow-painted black-bodied vehicle called a whisky, which was grandfather's property, and into the shafts of which could be put any spare quadruped, whether donkey, or mule, or pony, it mattered little, and which afforded a considerable relief when a trip as far as Lowestoft was determined on. At that time there was no harbour, and the town ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... resembled coarse bristles than hair, and with respect to size, I have seen many a Westphalian hog quite as tall. I was not altogether satisfied with the idea of exhibiting myself on the back of this most extraordinary quadruped, and looked wistfully on the respectable animal on which my guide had thought proper to place himself; he interpreted my glances, and gave me to understand that as he was destined to carry the baggage, he was entitled to the best horse; ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... by chance encounters with enemies who were mounted upon them. Although the naturalist of to-day perceives the impossibility of there ever having been on this earth a form uniting the trunk and fore-limbs of a quadruped to the upper part of a man's body, such scientific conceptions are a part of our modern, recently acquired store of knowledge. To the Greeks of the myth-making age the creature, half man, half horse, added but one more wonder to the vast store the world already contained. ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... is," said Squeers. "A horse is a quadruped, and quadruped's Latin for beast, as everybody that's gone through the grammar knows. As you're perfect in that, go and look after my horse, and rub him down well, or I'll rub you down. The rest of the class go and draw water up, till somebody tells you to leave off, for it's ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... England's animal realm that meets me in the midst of these reflections on things supernal and glorious. I will let the Northern Lights go, with their gorgeous pantomimes and midnight revelries, and have a moment's communing with this unfortunate quadruped. It is called in derision here a "donkey," but an ass, in a more generous time, when one of his race and size bore upon his back into the Holy City the world's Saviour and Re-Creator. Poor, libelled, hopeless beast! I pity you from ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... the general cheapening of printed matter, seem to have dulled that faculty and given us a scattered state of mind. We browse dispersedly, in goatish fashion, instead of nibbling down to the root like that more conscientious quadruped whose name, if I mentioned it, would degrade the metaphor. Devouring so much, so hastily, so irreverentially, how shall a man establish close contact with the mind of him who writes, and impregnate himself with his peculiar outlook to such an extent as to be ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... the time we write of, "Old Crutch," too, with his scaffolding under his arm, and disabled limb dangling like a loose girth from his rosinante's side, a quadruped equalling the Dollar's mount in beauty,—might have been seen side by side with Lord Chesterfield, on his thoroughbred, and addressing him in all the Timbobbinish horrors of his frightful vernacular. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... finest exhibition of instinct they could call to mind; but the master said, with vehemence, "It's far above instinct; it's REASON, and many a man, privileged to be saved and go with you and me to a better world by right of its possession, has less of it that this poor silly quadruped that's foreordained to perish"; and then he laughed, and said: "Why, look at me—I'm a sarcasm! bless you, with all my grand intelligence, the only think I inferred was that the dog had gone mad and was destroying the child, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... the gothic fount, into which a pellucid mountain-rill pours its refreshing waters. Among the remembrances of former days, is the effigy of a guardian 'lion,' (which, under the name of a 'bear,' has been noted by an author whom we have quoted;) the melancholy quadruped is now considerably "used up," and excites a laugh at the burlesque on the monarch of the forest, which his attenuated figure and shrivelled hide present. Plas-Newydd is unquestionably a delightful residence; and its adjacent ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin

... permit you to bring to bear the highest powers of intellectuality upon the momentous problems which naturally fall to the lot of great minds? And now I find you guilty of a most flagrant breach of courtesy in interrupting my learned discourse to call attention to a mere quadruped of the genus FELIS. As I was ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... her mouth, and carried it quickly to a hole in another tree, three or four hundred yards off, and then came back and took the others, one by one, till she had conveyed them all to their new home. The intelligent instinct manifested by this little quadruped excited great interest in Isaac's observing mind. When he drove the cows to pasture, he always went by that tree, to see how the young family were getting along. In a short time, they were running all over the tree with their careful mother, eating ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... was one thing I had particularly noticed, and that was the eyes. I should rather say the places where the eyes had been; for the eyes themselves were quite gone, and the sockets cleaned out to the very bottom. Now, I reasoned that no quadruped could do this. The holes were too small even for a jackal to get his slender snout into. The work must have been done by the beak of a bird; and what sort of bird. Why, a ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... as the Italians have named the artist "Il Pittore Cavalieresco," so will this subject of his skill remain forever the ideal of Il Cavaliere Pittoresco. And as he now rides at the head of this brilliant array, his beautiful white dog bounds onward joyously beside him, that quadruped renowned in the pamphlets of the time, whose snowy skin has been stained by many a blood-drop in the desperate forays of his master, but who has thus far escaped so safely that the Puritans believe him a familiar spirit, and try to destroy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... or a lodgment of earth appears, the yew-tree, indigenous in such situations, contrasts its deep and glossy green with the pale grey of the limestone; but the goat, the old adventurous inhabitant of situations, inaccessible to every other quadruped, has been lately banished from the sides of Gordale. But the wonders of this place are not confined to its surface. In mining for lapis calaminaris, two caverns have been discovered near the Tarn, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various

... confess, to quite too rude spirits. The children wanted him baptized by the time-honoured title of 'Jacko'; but by a series of exploits in which the monkey distinguished himself at the expense of every member of the household in turn, it became evident that only one name would fit a quadruped of his peculiar disposition; and that was 'Tricky.' Tricky, therefore, he was called, and as Tricky he ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond

... above. However, after mature consideration and long debate, it was settled that I should, if possible, be mounted before starting, instead of trusting to chance beyond the border. This, of course, decided the selection of routes: no quadruped could ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... gone intirely!" The quadruped referred to was tossed to a height of about thirty feet, and alighted senseless upon the ice. The bear seized him with her teeth and tossed him with an incredibly slight effort. The other dogs, nothing daunted by ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... chair coolie, whom I had just paid off—for it was assuredly one of the trio—leading out again one of those little wiry, shaggy ponies, and wished to do another deal. He had, however, struck a snag. We did not come to terms. I merely lifted the quadruped bodily from ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... these tribes," he says, "traditionally believes that his forefathers came years ago from another country, and they all assert from the same tradition, that the country was called Heawise." The country at this time produced only one quadruped, the dog, and that was an alien. Thus the New Zealanders had no means of subsistence, but vegetables and a few fowls unknown to the English. Fortunately the inhabitants were saved from death by starvation by the abundance of fish. Accustomed to war, and looking upon all ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... probable then, that, just as in the Miocene epoch, we find an ancestral equine form less modified than Equus, so, if we go back to the Eocene epoch, we shall find some quadruped related to the Anchitherium, as Hipparion is related to Equus, and consequently departing ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... black, white, and snuff-colored, twins, triplets, quartettes, and quincunxes, in calico and sackcloth, and in a state of nature, filled the vehicle, and were hung about it by the leg or neck or middle. A half-starved quadruped of osseous and slightly equine appearance drew the concern, and the shrieking axles drowned ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... again au grand galop, drivers and outriders giving, from time to time, the most extraordinary shrieks to encourage the horses and to amuse themselves, wild and shrill enough to frighten any civilized quadruped. The road grew more picturesque as we advanced, and at length our attention was arrested by the sight of the two great pyramids, which rise to the east of the town of San Juan Teotihuacan, which are mentioned ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... for common-sense in an English hunting county, you must talk horse all day and play Bridge all night,—then and then only will you have earned admission into these 'exclusive' circles where the worth of a quadruped exceeds ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... caught his breath, for just then he saw something moving in the shadow of the woodshed. A second look showed it to be some sort of quadruped, and the third—could he believe his eyes?—revealed the ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis

... image of a quadruped, very rude; impossible to determine the animal intended; white ware with ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Indians of New Mexico in 1880 • James Stevenson

... occurred just at that period of the morning when the grazing animals retired from the open patena to the cool shade of the forest: doubtless, the leopard had taken my approach for that of a deer, or some such animal. And if his spring had been at a quadruped instead of a biped, his distance was so well measured, that it must have landed him on the neck of a deer, an elk, or a buffalo; as it was, one pace more would have done for me. A bear would not have let his victim ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... me, hastening to start, hast thou urged this injunction; for my winged quadruped flaps with his pinions the smooth track of aether; and blithely would he recline his limbs in his ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus

... and mammal has the right to live out its life according to its destiny; and man is in honor bound to respect those rights. At the same time it is a mistake to regard each wild bird or quadruped as a sacred thing, which under no circumstances may be utilized by man. We are not fanatical Hindus of the castes which religiously avoid the "taking of life" of any kind, and gently push aside the flea, the centipede ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... sought a little more comfort, and followed the equipage sitting in a sort of hamper-like, diminutive basket, hung from the broad back of a sturdy quadruped. Dresses became more fanciful, both in materials and colours. From this it was but a step to even more elaborate toilettes which necessitated a conveyance of some sort on wheels, but the most intrepid still clung to the traditionally classic methods. Marie Antoinette had ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... airman a quadruped? Did he sit or stand upright, like a man? Or did he use all four limbs, animal-fashion? Van Emmon had to admit that he could not tell; no wonder he didn't guess ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... agreed to leave them in charge of the Hottentots, and advance on foot, thinking that if any of the buffaloes should turn upon them, it would be easy to escape by retreating across the quagmire, which, though passable for man, would not support the weight of a heavy quadruped. They advanced accordingly, and, under covert of the bushes, approached the game with such advantage, that the first volley brought down three of the fattest of the herd, and so severely wounded the great bull leader, that he dropped on his knees, bellowing ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... to Brother Jarrum the startling fact, that Susan Peckaby was not to go out with the crowd at present on the wing. A higher destiny awaited her. She would be sent for in a different manner—in a more important form; sent for special, on a quadruped. That is to say, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... days before and Guinevere had been a fish, then a helpless biped, and now suddenly, somewhere between my salad and coffee, she became an aquatic quadruped. Strangest of all, her hands were mobile, her feet useless; and when the dance was at an end, and she sank slowly to the bottom, she came to rest on the very tips of her two longest fingers; her legs and toes still drifting high and useless. Just before she ceased, her arms stretched ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... of changes for granted, most of the present peculiarities and anomalies in the distribution of species may be directly traced to them. In our own islands, with a very few trifling exceptions, every quadruped, bird, reptile, insect, and plant, is found also on the adjacent continent. In the small islands of Sardinia and Corsica, there are some quadrupeds and insects, and many plants, quite peculiar. In Ceylon, more closely connected to India than Britain is to Europe, many animals ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... rather a restive one, who, like Cowper's hare, "would bite if he could," and in addition, kick not a little. We could not suppose that these predispositions in the martial steed were at all aggravated by the unskilful jockeyship to which he was subjected, but the sensitive quadruped did rebel a little in the stable, and wince a little in the field! Perhaps the poor animal was something in the state of the horse that carried Mr. Wordsworth's "Idiot Boy," who, in his sage contemplations, "wondered"—"What he had got ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... her ardour of search, was found looking under the bed in an upstairs room—scarcely a likely grazing ground for any four-footed animal (unless perhaps it might be a night-mare). But whether she expected to find there the lost quadruped, or the man guilty of its abduction, tradition says not. At any rate, all that any of the searchers found—and that not till broad daylight—was the print of the good mare's hoofs in some soft ground over which ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... branches, like the squirrel and the monkey, but under them. He moves suspended from the branch, he rests suspended from it, and he sleeps suspended from it. To enable him to do this he must have a very different formation from that of any other known quadruped. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... you not wait upon the lunatic?" was offered as a paraphrase of "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?" He listened with amused interest to the teachers who deduced our descent from "a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits." But he thought it deplorable that a leading physicist should never have heard of Bishop Wilson of Sodor and Man, and that a leading journalist ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... had scarcely entered the bushes when they saw Top engaged in a struggle with an animal which he was holding by the ear. This quadruped was a sort of pig nearly two feet and a half long, of a blackish brown color, lighter below, having hard scanty hair; its toes, then strongly fixed in the ground, seemed to be united by a membrane. Herbert recognized in this animal the capybara, that is to say, ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... other creatures lived. I did not take to the kangaroo rat, he was too large and formidable to be pleasant, and was by no means tame, but to be pulled out of the cage by his long tail was, I confess, enough to scare the mildest quadruped. At length I was shown some Peruvian guinea-pigs. Wonderful little creatures! With hair three or four inches long, white, yellow and black, set on anyhow, sticking out in odd tufts, one side of their ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... sleep led on by indigestion was heavy on our eyelids, a snort, loud as a lion's roar, made us start. Then there came a long succession of chump, chump, from the molar teeth, and a snort, snort, from the wakeful nostril of our mute companions, (equo ne credite, Teucri!)—one stinted quadruped was ransacking the manger for hay, another was cracking his beans to make him frisky to-morrow, and more than one seemed actually rubbing his moist nose just under our bed! This was not all; not a whisk of their tails escaped us, and when they coughed, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... myself with the thought—if Martin had chosen this subject for a frontispiece, there would have been in some dark corner a white Lady, white as the Walker on the waves—riding upon some mystical quadruped —and high above would have risen "tower above tower a massy structure high" the Tenterden steeples of Coventry, till the poor Cross would scarce have known itself among the clouds, and far above them all, the distant Clint hills peering over chimney ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... and Africa. The elephant is the largest quadruped now in existence; it is extremely sagacious, docile and friendly: in the countries where they live they are trained to useful labor, and by their great strength are enabled to perform tasks which a man or horse could not accomplish: among the native princes they were, and even still are, used in ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... to work his wings, but he stretched them out to their full extent, and then dropped quietly to the ground. When he touched the earth, his wings fell off, and he looked like an ordinary quadruped. ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... Mr. Day observed judiciously. "They're all—th' hull quadruped (Yes, Marty, that's what I meant, 'quartette,') of 'em—purty poor pertaters, I 'low. But four hundred dollars is a lot of money ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long

... it to-morrow morning," replied Phoebicius with perfect indifference, but with an evil smile on his flaccid lips. "So many two-legged lovers make themselves free to my house, that I do not see why I should share your affections with a quadruped into the bargain. How came this sheepskin here?" Sirona vouchsafed no answer to this last question, but she exclaimed in great excitement, "By God—by your God—by the mighty Rock, and by all the gods! ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... now they are known as Great Danes or Ulms, indifferently. How they originated I never cared to learn. I imagine it sometimes. I fancy some jilted, jaundiced descendant of the sea-rovers, retiring to his castle, and endeavoring, by mating some ugly bloodhound with a wild wolf, to produce a quadruped as fierce and cowardly and treacherous as man or woman may be. He succeeded only partially, but he ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... magical medicine That is true! Being of mystery,—grown in the water— He gave it to me! To the face of our Grandfather stretch out your hand; Holding a quadruped, ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... with sugar, and he began with "Clairette," feeding the sweet morsels to all his quadruped friends. "Clairette" lifted her forefoot, begging for one more piece. He laid his head against the velvety neck of the animal, stroking caressingly the silky nostrils and around the fine eyes, then kissing her on the white spot just below. The mare seemed to understand ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... a three-legged stool, "if I had only been a quadruped, I should have been happy as the day is long—which, on the twenty-first of June, would be considerable ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... reason to be sure that not an animal was left behind. Two rhinoceroses and a buffalo made an attempt to break the chain, but were shot down. The opening in the barrier was then closed up, and there was no longer any wild quadruped worth mentioning in the whole of ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... bite an ox, or any other quadruped, take a cup of that extract of fennel, which the physicians call smyrnean, and mix it with a measure of old wine. Inject this through his nostrils and at the same time poultice the wound with hogs' dung.[37] You can treat a man ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... [extinct]; snake, serpent, viper, eft; asp, aspick[obs3]. [amphibians] frog, toad. [fishes] trout, bass, tuna, muskelunge, sailfish, sardine, mackerel. [insects] ant, mosquito, bee, honeybee. [arthropods] tardigrade, spider. [classificatiopn by number of feet] biped, quadruped. flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae[Lat]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock[obs3], duck, grouse, plover, rail, snipe. [domesticated mammals] horse ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... his wrath with great severity on pretence of mistaking him for some presumptuous cur, which had disturbed the repose of the inn: nay, when he called aloud for mercy in a supplicating tone, and his chastiser could no longer pretend to treat him as a quadruped, such was the virulence of the young gentleman's indignation, that he could not help declaring his satisfaction, by telling Pallet he had richly deserved the punishment he had undergone, for his madness, folly, and impertinence, in contriving ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... Not a quadruped of any kind was to be seen. Neither cat nor dog was there, neither goat nor pig nor any other creature such as in the meanest savage villages of other times might have been found upon the surface of the earth. But, undisturbed and bold, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... quadruped : kvarpiedulo. quail : koturno. Quaker : kvakero. quality : kvalito, eco. quantity : kvanto, kiomo. quarry : sxtonminejo. quarter : kvarono, (district) kvartalo. quay : kajo, en (el) sxipigejo. question : demandi, dubi. quick : rapida, "-en," akceli. quicksilver : hidrargo. quiet : ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... quelques-uns l'appellent Michabou (Manabozho)."—Charlevoix, Journal Historique, 344. ] It was he who restored the world, submerged by a deluge. He was hunting in company with a certain wolf, who was his brother, or, by other accounts, his grandson, when his quadruped relative fell through the ice of a frozen lake, and was at once devoured by certain serpents lurking in the depths of the waters. Manabozho, intent on revenge, transformed himself into the stump of a tree, and by this artifice ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... person and bearing are unmistakably aristocratic. If we may credit the stories which from time to time have reached us, she can, if necessary, use her riding-whip in vigorous fashion about the ears of any offending biped or quadruped. In America she is somewhat out of her latitude. Paris ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... the question as to the manner in which man attained to the erect position from the state of a climbing quadruped. Here again he puts the influence of Natural Selection in the first rank. The immediate progenitors of man had to maintain a struggle for existence in which success was to the more intelligent, and to those with social instincts. The ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... thinking how little was the difference between man and beast. It was only in its objective. The manner was much the same. Yes, and the very means employed created in him an impression favorable to the hapless quadruped. Surely their battle for existence was ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... side of the notch should face the path; its height should be about a foot. Into the notch the string should be passed, being afterwards drawn across the path and secured on the opposite side at the same height. The trap is now set; and woe to the unlucky quadruped that dares make too free with that string! A very slight pressure from either side is equally liable to slip the string from the notch, or loosen the peg from the ground; and the result is the same in either case,—down ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... at the hands of the latter—a circumstance which probably accounts for one of the horse's legs being about a foot longer than the rest—half of that limb having been renewed after it had been lost in one of the many free fights in which this remarkable quadruped has seen service. The greatest proprietor of real estate in Dublin is the young earl of Pembroke, son of the late Right Hon. Sidney Herbert, so well known in connection with the Crimean war, who was created, shortly before ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... to which he refers. There can be no doubt that the symbol represents the grain of maize from which the sprouting leaves are rising (plate LXIV, 32). In one place a bird is pulling it up; at another place a small quadruped is attacking it; at another the Tlaloc is planting (or perhaps replanting) ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas

... cow," said the Doctor, "considered metaphysically or as an abstraction, is an animal possessing neither hide nor horns, bones nor flesh, but is the mere type, eidolon, and fantastical semblance of these parts of a quadruped. It has a shape without any substance, and no color at all, for its redness is the mere counterfeit or imagination of such. As it lacks the positive, so is it also deficient in the accidental properties of all the animals in its tribe, for it has no locomotion, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... wanted to be interred with the remains of their ancestors, it would sometimes be possible to comply with their wishes only by burying them with a quantity of mutton—not to say with the residue of another quadruped than the sheep, which often grazes in churchyards. Science, in short, is hammering into people's heads truths which they have been accustomed merely to gabble with their mouths—that all flesh is indeed grass, or convertible into ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... harness that looked unhappy. Traces must help a dog to grow in his own esteem, and to work out his ideal of the high destiny reserved for him; or why does he, when tied under a cart to which a larger quadruped is harnessed, invariably try to persuade himself and others that he is pulling the load up the hill, and that the horse or ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... on three legs, and all lame on the fourth. Thus mounted, I met thee on my road. I saluted thee; so did the beast, for his head well nigh touched the ground. Whereon I did ask thee, in a Latin play of words, to give me at least a quadruped, not a tripod, for my journey. [65] Gracious, even in ire, and with relenting laugh, was thine answer. My liege, thy words implied banishment—thy laughter pardon. So ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... shaded by a couple of huge locust trees, and accommodated with a long bench. Here I often sat with my host, who like Parson Adams always wore the cassock; but he did not read AEschylus. Mr. Vandyke was at least sixty; yet if a colt, a pig, or any other quadruped entered his paddock, he sprang from his seat with more than youthful agility, and vociferously chased the intruder from his domain. I could not but smile to behold the parson running after a pig and mingling his cries with ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut

... rain and fog of early morning. A reckless path goes across its face with a sharp pitch to the ocean. It was so slippery and the wind so tugged and pulled to throw me off, that although I endangered my dignity, I played the quadruped on the narrower parts. But once on top in the open blast of the storm and safe upon the level, I thumped with desire for a plot. In each inlet from the ocean I saw a pirate lugger—such is the pleasing word—with a keg of rum set up. Each cranny led to a cavern with ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... and also with some acquired habits or propensities peculiar to the parent; the former of these are in common with other animals; the latter seem to distinguish or produce the kind of animal, whether man or quadruped, with the similarity of feature or form to ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... there is its freedom, its superior powers of locomotion, its triumph over time and space. The reptile measures its length upon the ground; the quadruped enjoys a more complete liberation, and is related to the earth less closely; man more still; and the bird most of all. Over our heads, where our eyes travel, but our bodies follow not,—in the free native air,—is his home. The trees are his temples and his dwellings, and the breezes sing his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... is an Alpine animal remarkable for the development of its horns, which are sometimes more than three feet in length, and of such extraordinary dimensions that they appear to a casual observer to be peculiarly unsuitable for a quadruped which traverses the craggy regions of Alpine precipices. Some writers say that these enormous horns are employed by their owners as "buffers," by which the force of a fall may be broken; and that the animal, when leaping from a great height, ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... behind. Some show that nice sagacity of smell, And read with such discernment, in the port And figure of the man, his secret aim, That oft we owe our safety to a skill We could not teach, and must despair to learn. But learn we might, if not too proud to stoop To quadruped instructors, many a good And useful quality, and virtue too, Rarely exemplified among ourselves; Attachment never to be weaned, or changed By any change of fortune, proof alike Against unkindness, absence, and neglect; Fidelity, that neither bribe nor threat Can ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... scattered about the fields, and the other believed it some cringing animal of the woods. Twice Content raised his piece to tire, and as often did he let it fall, in reluctance to do injury to even a quadruped of whose character he was ignorant. It is more than probable that his less considerate, and but half-obedient companion would have decided the question soon after leaving he postern, had not the peculiar contents of his musket rendered him delicate ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... record that a monarch has been made to tremble by the sayings of an old woman, supposed to be in league with the prince of darkness. A king and his army have been kept from battle by the movements of a harmless quadruped, or by the flight of a bird, unaware that before sunset it would be the eagle's portion. Other sovereigns have supported their tyranny over a down-trodden people by an arrogant pretension to an authority derived in a mysterious ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... calculation that if all the "lines" which were doled out as the result of that morning's work were to be extended in one unbroken length, they would reach exactly from Plummer's desk to the late Hector's kennel. Hector again! Every one's thoughts veered round to the unlucky quadruped and the storm that was brewing ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... situated; and a bugle, which the Dunniewassel winded till rock and greenwood rang, served as a signal to a well-manned galley, which, starting from a creek where it lay concealed, received the party on board, including Gustavus; which sagacious quadruped, an experienced traveller both by water and land, walked in and out of the boat with the discretion ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... saddle-bow, and if the quiet old horse he bestrode believed the large drops which fell upon his sleek neck came from the clouds, or the drooping foliage of the forest, that animal was never more deceived in his quadruped life. We know that fact, for it ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise



Words linked to "Quadruped" :   croupe, hindfoot, haunch, hind leg, biped, flank, bipedal, forefoot, animal leg, four-footed, posteriority, tetrapod, lumbus, croup, foreleg, loin, hindquarters, quadrupedal, rump



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