"Arboreal" Quotes from Famous Books
... sunk beneath the waters of the ocean; that the tree or trees had grown thereon, and still continued to grow on the submerged soil; and the nuts when ripe, being lighter than water, rose to the surface, instead—as is the habit of supermarine arboreal produce—of falling to the ground. Scarcely could a more splendid illustration of the fallacies of hypothetical reasoning be found, than the pages that contain this specious and far-fetched argument. Even the celebrated Rumphius, who ... — Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... Kerchak's rage had ceased they came slowly down from their arboreal retreats and pursued again the various occupations ... — Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... trees, next (as they relate) a dweller in caves, and whom I think I see squatting in cave-mouths, of a pleasant afternoon, to munch his berries—his wife, that accomplished lady, squatting by his side: his name I never heard, but he is often described as Probably Arboreal, which may serve for recognition. Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal; in all our veins there run some minims of his old, wild, tree-top blood; our civilised nerves still tingle with his rude terrors and pleasures; ... — The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was said by the watchers in the wonder of seeing the work, for no craft is very far from the line beyond which is magic, and the man in the leather coat was clearly a craftsman: and he said nothing for he worked at a craft. And when the arboreal crown was finished, and its edges were straight and sharp, an hour had passed since he began near noon. Then he drilled a hole near the rim and, drawing a thin green ribbon from his pocket, he passed it through the hole and, rising, ... — Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... ride, mostly under the shade of fine old trees. The road wound around the hills; here and there a break in the arboreal border showed views of rolling country, well-shaped and pleasing, winding up grassy slopes in groves of verdure. Of course most of the freshness of leaf was past, yet the modest gray-green gave a silvery sheen to the landscape ... — Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... prehensile bill, and within it a tongue which acts in reality as an organ of touch. They use their crooked beaks to help them in climbing from branch to branch; and being thus provided alike with wings, legs, hands, fingers, bill and tongue, they are in fact the most truly arboreal of all known animals, and present in the fullest and highest degree all the peculiar features of ... — Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... though under very different conditions.] and whenever the Indian, in consequence of war or the exhaustion of the beasts of the chase, abandoned the narrow fields he had planted and the woods he had burned over, they speedily returned, by a succession of herbaceous, arborescent, and arboreal growths, to their original state. Even a single generation sufficed to restore them almost to their primitive luxuriance of forest vegetation. [Footnote: The great fire of Miramichi in 1825, probably the most extensive and terrific conflagration recorded in authentic history, ... — The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... darkness were specimens new to him and he could hardly wait for daylight to come to enable him to get acquainted with the tree which had invited his attention so rudely. Next morning Pomeroy learned that his new found arboreal friend was a Persian walnut. It was loaded and the wind storm of the night had covered the ground with shucked and unshucked nuts. By permission of the landlord, he gathered a peck of the Persian walnuts, wrapped ... — Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... often cause some individuals or groups of individuals to adopt new habits in order to seize upon vacant places in nature where the struggle is less severe. Some, living among extensive marshes, may adopt a more aquatic mode of life; others, living where forests abound, may become more arboreal. In either case we cannot doubt that the changes of structure needed to adapt them to their new habits would soon be brought about, because we know that variations in all the external organs and all their separate parts are very abundant ... — Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... an attempt to reconstruct, from the atavistic characters, a picture of our primitive ancestor who was undoubtedly an arboreal animal. The occurrence of rudiments of parts in one sex which only come to full development in the other is next discussed. This state of things Darwin regards as derived from an original hermaphroditism. In regard ... — Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... gray lichens—the "caribou moss," as it is called—which clothe the trunks and hang down from the shrivelled boughs. And still further north the trees become mere stunted stems, set with blighted buds that have never been able to develop themselves into branches; until, finally, the last vestiges of arboreal growth take refuge under a thick carpet of lichens and mosses, the characteristic vegetation of the ... — The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... the termination. And one piece of natural knowledge is added to another, and others are added to that, and at last we come to propositions so interesting as Mr. Darwin's famous proposition[128] that "our ancestor was a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits." Or we come to propositions of such reach and magnitude as those which Professor Huxley delivers, when he says that the notions of our forefathers about the beginning and the end of the world were all wrong, and that nature is the expression ... — Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... almost to tears when "Can 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 should confound him with Bishop Wilson ... — Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... generally covered, as before described, with a profuse floral and arboreal vegetation, whilst the other climatic belts display their own peculiar plant and tree life. Throughout the country generally, a large number of species of timber and plants exist in an uncultivated state, of commercial value, ... — Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... with the vertical stems of the bamboo, as to assist greatly in concealing him from his approaching prey. How remarkable it is that besides the lion and tiger, almost all the other large cats are arboreal in their habits, and almost all have ocellated or spotted skins, which must certainly tend to blend them with the background of foliage; while the one exception, the puma, has an ashy brown uniform fur, and has the habit of clinging so closely ... — Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... asked me where I lived. And I said, quite truthfully, that I lived in the elms on Buxton Common, near Purley. So I do. This gentleman, Mr Montmorency, whom I think you have met before, is an agent for houses of this kind. He has a special line in arboreal villas. It's being kept rather quiet at present, because the people who want these houses don't want them to get too common. But it's just the sort of thing a fellow like myself, racketing about in all sorts of queer corners of London, naturally ... — The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... were, then, actually and literally in the first lines! The knowledge made one's heart tick a little; but, except for another shot or two from our arboreal listener, and the motionless intentness of the soldier's back at the peep-hole, there was nothing to show that we were not a ... — Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... striking difference between man and animals lies in the greater control which man has gained over his primitive instinctive reactions. As compared with the entire duration of organic evolution, man came down from his arboreal abode and assumed his new role of increased domination over the physical world but a moment ago. And now, though sitting at his desk in command of the complicated machinery of civilization, when he fears a business catastrophe his fear is manifested in the terms of his ancestral physical battle ... — Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... by betaking herself for the night to the branches of a spreading beech. Whether in actual life this is a probable course of conduct need not exercise your mind; at least not enough to prevent your enjoyment of her arboreal adventure, which comes, as I say, with the more freshness as a break in what might else be a surfeit of proposals. In effect, a gallant little florin's worth of fiancailles; though, if you wish to avoid feeling like a matrimonial ... — Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... absorbed into the course of nature: the dawn, the sunset, the season's round, the flowers that spring ever renewed to deck the laureate hearse. And as his mind sought her in the night breeze that came in to fan him and Tenney alike, in the sky where the stars, through arboreal spaces, never looked so piercingly bright, he did seem to be aware of an actual intelligence. But it was assuredly not Tira and it was not Old ... — Old Crow • Alice Brown
... than the radius, that the three digits which have persisted are the 3rd, 4th, and 5th, and not the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd as usually taught. A comparison of the hind-limbs of birds with those of bats and pterodactyls suggests strongly that the patagium flyers have arisen from arboreal or climbing animals, while the birds arose from terrestrial forms which acquired the bipedal habit, as certain reptiles have. An arboreal animal would necessarily use all four limbs, as climbing animals actually do. The wings of birds, on the other ... — Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... {91c} or Coendou, who (in strange contrast to the well-known classic Porcupine of the rocks of Southern Europe) climbs trees after leaves, and swings about like the monkeys. For the life of animals in the primeval forest is, as one glance would show you, principally arboreal. The flowers, the birds, the insects, are all a hundred feet over your head as you walk along in the all but lifeless shade; and half an hour therein would make you feel how true was Mr. Wallace's simile—that a walk in the tropic forest was like ... — At Last • Charles Kingsley
... an idea that one listens better with one's eyes shut, and that this and other things are a remnant of our primitive existence when perhaps the ears of our arboreal ancestors kept a lookout while the rest of their senses slept. I think, also, that the instinct I found in myself, and have since in other children, to conceal a wound is a similar survival. At one time, I suppose, in the human ... — An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... under the weight of these bulky animals. Something like six millions of years ago, long-tailed, fluttering birds appeared, with lizard-like claws at the bend of their wings and with jaws filled with teeth. These creatures were certainly arboreal, spending most of their time among the branches of trees. So large were certain great sloth-like creatures that they uprooted the trees bodily, in order to feed on their succulent leaves, sometimes bending their trunks down until ... — The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... head swung a hammock from which hung a leg; other hammocks hanging in the semi-gloom called up suggestions of lemurs and arboreal bats. The swinging kerosene lamp cast its light forward past the heel of the bowsprit to the knightheads, lighting here a naked foot hanging over the side of a bunk, here a face from which protruded a pipe, here a breast covered with dark mossy ... — The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... love trees. Perhaps this is an inherited result of arboreal ancestry. Even so, very few of us realize what an astonishingly close tie exists between the survival of trees and the well-being of the human race. Probably even fewer realize the very great importance, in the economy of animal life, of trees which bear nuts. Not alone for the sake of their nuts ... — Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various |