"Birdlime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fruit serves for food; clothes are made from the fibres of the inner bark; the wood is used for building houses and making boats; the male catkins are employed as tinder; the leaves for table cloths and for wrapping provisions in; and the viscid milky juice affords birdlime. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... expected, is evident from the number of hoards discovered, which the unfortunate employes had saved up against the rainy day arrived. The routing-out of this conglomeration was only equalled in trouble by the removal of the birdlime with which the various benches were covered, and which adhered with most pertinacious obstinacy, in spite of every effort to get rid of it. From one of the wicker baskets used for the purpose of receiving the torn-up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... mistletoe, a plant of great fame for the use made of it by the Druids of old in their religious rites and incantations. It bears a very slimy white berry, of which birdlime may be made, whence its Latin name of viscus, It is one of those plants which do not grow in the ground by a root of their own, but fix themselves upon other plants; whence they have been humorously styled parasitical, as being ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... twined) Have narrow entrances; for frosts will bind Honey as hard as dog-days run it thin: —In bees' abhorrence each extreme's akin. Not purposeless they vie with wax to paste Their narrow cells, and choke the crannies fast With pollen, or that gum specific which Out-binds or birdlime ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with it, just as you would catch them with your hand. Others maintain (and this is the general opinion) that the tongue of the chameleon is terminated by a sort of sticky cushion, on which the flies are caught, like birds with birdlime. This singular dart is always out-jerked with such force that, if it strikes against a glass (the experiment has been tried with chameleons in captivity), it makes a sound as loud as that of a pea from a pea-shooter; so you may judge if it is not strong enough to stun ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... rendered drying by boiling it with 2 ozs. of sugar of lead and 3 ozs. of litharge for every pint of oil till they are dissolved, which may be in half an hour. Then put 1 lb. of birdlime and half a pint of the drying oil into an iron or copper vessel, whose capacity should equal about a gallon, and let it boil very gently over a slow charcoal fire, till the birdlime ceases to crackle, which will be in about ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... well-known evergreen of singular beauty, of which we have many varieties, both striped, and of different colours in the leaf. Birdlime is made from the inner bark of this tree, by beating it in a running stream and leaving it to ferment in a close vessel. If iron be heated with charcoal made of holly with the bark on, the iron will be rendered brittle; but if the bark be taken off, this effect ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... next generation, battling these identical popular errors in the pages of his Pseudodoxia Epidemica. In the like manner, Gerard's botanical evidence seems to have been of no use in persuading the public that mistletoe was not generated out of birdlime dropped by thrushes into the boughs of trees, or that its berries were not desperately poisonous. To observe and state the truth is not enough. The ears of those to whom it is proclaimed must be ready ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... not, or he would not, leave her alone. Look at a bird's wings!—how like an angel's! Yet so vile a thing as a bit of birdlime subdues them utterly; and such was the fascinating power of this mean man over this worthy woman. She was a reader, a thinker, a model of respectability, industry, and sense; a businesswoman, keen and practical; could encounter sharp hands in sharp trades; could buy or sell hogs, calves, or ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... net; And as I work, record my sorrows past, Asking old Time how long my woes shall last. And first—but stay! alas! what do I see? Moist gum-like tears drop from this mournful tree; And see, it sticks like birdlime; 'twill not part, Sorrow is even such birdlime at my heart. Alas! poor tree, dost thou want company? Thou dost, I see't, and I will weep with thee; Thy sorrows make me dumb, and so shall mine, It shall ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... between the true and the false church;' and forthwith, with the assistance of a handkerchief and a little hot water, he opened the eyes of the barbarian. So we manage matters! A pretty church, that old British church, which could not work miracles—quite as helpless as the modern one. The fools! was birdlime so scarce a thing amongst them?—and were the properties of warm water so unknown to them, that they could not close a pair of eyes ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... Acres's style of oath—the so-called referential or sentimental swearing. Dicaeopolis invokes Ecbatana when Shamartabas struts upon the stage. Socrates in the 'Clouds' swears by the everlasting vapors. King Hoopoe's favorite oath is "Odds nets and birdlime." And the vein of humor that lies in over-ingenious, elaborate, and sustained metaphor was first worked in these comedies. All these excellences are summed up in the incomparable wealth and flexibility of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... also a method much in vogue previously to the invention and discovery of decoys, of taking wild fowl with lime strings made of packthread or string, knotted in various ways and besmeared with birdlime; these were set in rows about fens, moors, and other feeding haunts of the birds, an hour or two before morning or evening twilight. This plan was to procure a number of small stakes, about 2 ft. in length, sharpened to a ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne |
