"Insect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... those men and women, who do not even approximately fulfil the conditions of their elevated rank, who will not endeavour after the great human-divine idea, striving to ascend, are sent away back down to that stage of development, say of fish or insect or reptile, beyond which their moral nature has refused to advance. Who has not seen or known men who appeared not to have passed, or indeed in some things to have approached the development of the more human of the lower animals! Let those take care who look ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... resembled the smaller one I have already described, except that it was of much grander dimensions. As in the first cave, one could hear the roar of an underground torrent, and the swallows seemed even more numerous. On the rocky walls I noticed plenty of large spiders and a curious insect, with a long body and long, thin legs, which ran very fast, and whose bite we were told was ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... eccentricity, coupled with the very unusual character of the details at the outer extremities of the figures, leads to the surmise that each part of the design is a conventional representation of some life form, a bird, an insect, or perhaps ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... bearings, the party was suddenly surprised, and, beating a hasty retreat, the theodolite stand and Cunningham's insect net were left behind, and immediately appropriated ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... the tail shield, and between the two the thorax, consisting of a number of distinct and unconsolidated segments. The head shield carries a pair of large, crescentic, compound eyes, like those of the insect. The eye varies greatly in the number of its lenses, ranging from fourteen in some species to fifteen thousand in others. Figure 268, C, is a restoration of the trilobite, and shows the appendages, which are found preserved only in ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... failed, and remains as it was two weeks earlier; it will soon fall. The young apples begin to take shape. They show a glow of red on the cheek. They are fuzzy all over. One of them is already injured on one side, having been stung by a curculio or other insect: there are keen ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... purpose ruleth, Tends it in its first conception, Baffles wholly and destroys it, Or unto completion brings it, Bringeth out its faults or virtues, Shewing where its merit lieth. Then shall every beast that liveth, Every bird and every reptile, Every fish and every insect, Raise their own peculiar voices— (Terrible, or sweet, or puny); And will testify their own way Of the powers of King Nimaera, Who their being's fire feedeth, Gives them space for life and glory, With that limit ends their being; For no hidden spirit have they Image to the holy Maker. ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... ever before. One could almost "stand on it." It continued so for a number of days, the wind increasing to a gale. The waves rose high, but I had a good ship. Still, in the dismal fog I felt myself drifting into loneliness, an insect on a straw in the midst of the elements. I lashed the helm, and my vessel held her course, and ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... is unusual, but it looks as if mine had taken an interest in me, because when he noticed my insect-bitten face, he sent me down some dope he had used with good effect in India. I expect the mosquitoes in India were the ordinary kind, but, believe me, trench "skeeters" are constructed differently and are proof against the ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... brother, resuming his cigar. "I always do. It is much more agreeable for all parties. But I don't know how it is that a man's younger brothers are always so rapid and unreasonable in their movements. Instead of saving that unhappy insect, you have precipitated its fate. Poor thing—and it had no soul," said the intruder, with a tone of pathos. The scene altogether was a curious one. Snugly sheltered from the draught, but enjoying the coolness of the atmosphere which it produced, lay the figure ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... and destructive activity of the blind forces of Nature. All the earth was a hateful theatre for the continual enactment of bloody and monotonous dramas; the worm consuming the plant; the bird mangling the insect, the deer fighting among themselves, and man, in his turn, pursuing all kinds of game. He identified nature with woman, both possessing in his eyes an equally deceiving appearance, the same beguiling beauty, and the same spirit of ambuscade ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... experiment was made some years ago by sending a malarial mosquito by mail from Italy to England, where an enthusiast allowed himself to be bitten by the insect. He had had no trace of malaria before, but a week after the mosquito's bite he came down with the disease. It has also been noted that in such parts of the country as Greenland and Alaska, where mosquitoes are as thick as in the far-famed New Jersey marshes, malaria does not result from the mosquito ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... away by the constant abrading action of the wind, the snow, the hail, and possibly the rain, which has beaten upon them through unnumbered years. It is no wonder that this is a lifeless solitude; there is nothing here capable of sustaining the life of even the meanest insect. Let us return to the ship, my friends, and hasten over this part of our journey; we shall meet with nothing worthy of interest until we reach the Pole, which itself will probably prove to be merely an undistinguishable spot in just such a waste ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... grating scream of the night hawk, darting about in the higher regions of the air, pursuing its noisy congeners, or swooping down with that peculiar hollow rushing sound, as of a person blowing into some empty vessel, when it seizes with wide-extended bill its insect prey. ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... perfectly exasperated by such trifling annoyances. He abused the poor mosquitoes desperately, and deplored the lack of some acid lotion which would have eased the pain of their stings. The Major did his best to console him by reminding him of the fact that they had only to do with one species of insect, among the 300,000 naturalists reckon. He would listen to nothing, and got up in ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... certainly that faint and sickly weed which is the curse of cultivated,—not naturally fertile and extensive countries; an insect that infests our forcing stoves and hot-house plants: and as the naturalists tell us all animals may be bred down to a state very different from that in which they were originally placed; that carriers, and fantails, and croppers, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... as it does two extensive slopes. No sooner had we pitched our camp, built a boma of thorny acacia, and other tree branches, by stacking them round our camp, and driven our animals to grass; than we were made aware of the formidable number and variety of the insect tribe, which for a time was another source of anxiety, until a diligent examination of the several species ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... meeting of the New York Microscopical Society, a paper was read by Dr. Samuel Lockwood, secretary of the New Jersey State Microscopical Society. His subject was the Wine Fly, Drosophila ampelophila. The paper was a contribution to the life-history of this minute insect. He had given in part three years to its study, beginning in September, 1881, when nothing whatever of its life-history seemed to have been known. In October the flies attacked his Concords. He found upon a grape which he was inspecting with a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... then in a hollow a clump of yellowish-green bamboo, though not numerous or nearly so large as in many another tropical land, above all else the symmetrical Gothic fronds of the palm nodding in a breeze the more humble vegetation could not know. The constant music of insect life sounded in my ears; everywhere were flowers of brilliant hue, masses of bush blossoms not unlike the lilac in appearance, but like all down on the Isthmus, odorless—or rather with a pungent ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... two seekers of truth, while White Otter got the spider on the body of the log, where he crushed it with his bow. The globular insect burst into a splash of blood, and the young savage threw back his shoulders with a haughty grunt, saying, "My medicine is strong—we shall go to the middle of the Absaroke village," and Red Arrow gave his ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... hero that lives," she answered, "may have his house made uninhabitable by a very small insect." Mackinnon swore that those were her own words. Consequently a sobriquet was attached to O'Brien of which he by no means approved. And from that day we always called Mrs. Talboys ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... the lamp; one pound of pork sausages; five copecks' worth of cloves and cinnamon; castor-oil for Misha; ten pounds of granulated sugar. To bring with you from home: a copper jar for the sugar; carbolic acid; insect powder, ten copecks' worth; twenty bottles of beer; vinegar; and corsets for Mlle. Shanceau at No. 82.... Ouf! And to bring home Misha's winter coat and goloshes. That is the order of my wife and family. Then there are the commissions of our dear friends and neighbours—devil ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... collected, and drawn specimens with the enthusiasm of a Londoner for the country, till she had a valuable little museum of her own gathering, and was a handbook for the county curiosities. Star, bird, flower, and insect, were more than resources, they were the friends of her lonely life, and awoke many a keen feeling of interest, many an aspiration of admiring adoration that carried her through her dreary hours. And though Miss Fennimore thought ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... krei. Creation kreitajxo. Creator kreinto. Creature estajxo. Credence kredo. Credible kredebla. Credit kredito. Creditor kreditoro. Credulity kredemo. Creed kredo. Creep rampi. Creole Kreolo. Crest tufo. Crevice fendo—ajxo. Crew maristaro. Cricket (insect) grilo. Crime krimo. Criminal krimulo. Criminally kriminale. Crimson rugxega. Cripple kripligi. Cripple kriplulo. Crippled kripla. Crisis krizo. Crisp friza. Critic kritikisto. Criticism kritiko. Croak bleki. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... who cheered the monotony of the way by tales and songs. The road lay along a sandy uneven soil highly impregnated with salt, the track being worn down by the footsteps of caravans. In these dreary regions no sound either of insect or of bird was heard. After they left Mourzouk, the eye was relieved at great distances, by the sight of small towns, situated in the oases, or watered valleys, the lofty palm-trees of which served to guide them. But these became ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... egg, they are not winged, but look like grub worms. After a while these grubs cast off their skins, and become locusts. Now, there is a kind of locust which is seventeen years in changing from the egg to the full insect It is this kind which is so numerous every seventeen years. If you go into the field when they are coming from the ground, you will see the grass ...
— The Summer Holidays - A Story for Children • Amerel
... Funyes, an insect like a maggot, whose eggs had been inserted on my having been put into an old house infested by them; as they enlarge they stir about and impart a stinging sensation; if disturbed, the head is drawn in a little. When a poultice is put on they seem obliged to come out possibly from ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... stopped suddenly, and caught hold of Hugh's left hand, which he had lifted to brush an insect from his face. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... a cuckoo from the Nepaul hills. A Baboo whom I knew had several servants to look after his aviary, one of whom had to go daily in search of white ants and ants' eggs for his insectivorous charge; for the shamah and diyul are both insect-eaters. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... has been centred upon the life and habits of the locust, mainly from the desire to seek its subjugation and destruction, and, whilst much general biological information has been written upon the subject, there are things which we do not yet know about this insect or its habits. We do not know what precise influences cause their migration, nor do we know what is the exact length of life of the locust or its breeding power, or the precise locality in any country which may be defined as its permanent abode. Locusts are classified under the order of orthopterous ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... given some space to the insect question, but no more than it deserves or requires. The venomous little wretches are quite important enough to spoil many a well planned trip to the woods and it is best to beat them from the start. You ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... fund for the support of superannuated or disabled fleas, their widows and orphans. With this view, he proposed that liberal premiums should be offered for the three best designs for a general almshouse; from which—as insect architecture was well known to be in a very advanced and perfect state—we might possibly derive many valuable hints for the improvement of our metropolitan universities, national galleries, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... twist—"I would make an affidavit to that effect before any notary." He began loosening his coat with his skinny fingers, fumbling in his inside pocket, thrusting deep his hand, as if searching for an elusive insect in the vicinity of his arm-pit, his talk continuing: "Yes, sir, before any notary, you are so exactly like your father. Not that I've seen your father, sir, VERY MANY TIMES"—the elusive had evidently escaped, for ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... is come With the insect's hum, And the birds that merrily sing. And sweet are the hours, And the fruits and flowers, That Summer ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... pools, and creeks, about which a child might play for a whole summer without weariness, like the Bell Rock or the Skerryvore, but one oval nodule of black-trap, sparsely bedabbled with an inconspicuous fucus, and alive in every crevice with a dingy insect between a slater and a bug. No other life was there but that of sea-birds, and of the sea itself, that here ran like a mill-race, and growled about the outer reef for ever, and ever and again, in the calmest weather, roared and spouted on the rock itself. ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who seemed to be getting unaccountably warm upon the subject; "I am sure you must see the antennae. I made them as distinct as they are in the original insect, and I presume that ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... wall; each beauteous flower, Iris all hues, roses, and jessamin, Reared high their flourished heads between, and wrought Mosaick; underfoot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone Of costliest emblem: Other creature here, Bird, beast, insect, or worm, durst enter none, Such was their awe of Man. In shadier bower More sacred and sequestered, though but feigned, Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor Nymph Nor Faunus haunted. Here, in close recess, With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs, Espoused ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... account of A.E. Nordenskioeld's Arctic investigations, published this year in Leipzig,[2] the author says: "The question of the mode of life of insects and of its relation to their environment in the extreme north is one of especial interest. Knowing, as we do, that any insect in the extreme north has at the most not more than from four to six weeks in each year for its development, we wonder how certain species can pass through their metamorphosis in so short a period. R. McLachlan adverts, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... poisoned by sunshine. Next year you will find the grass growing fresh and green where the stone lay—the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole—the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks as the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... pricking up his ears." Roseen listened solemnly, not in the least astonished to be told that the personage in question was possessed of ears; she supposed "a Gout" to be a living thing, an insect probably, of a more noxious ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... the subject, Amphitherium is believed to be a small Marsupial, most nearly allied to the living Banded Ant-eater (Myrmecobius) of Australia (fig. 158). Amphilestes and Phascolotherium (fig. 184) are also believed by the same distinguished anatomist and palaeontologist to have been insect-eating Marsupials, and the latter is supposed to find its nearest living ally in the Opossums (Didelphys) of America. Lastly, the Stereognathus of the Stonesfield Slate is in a dubious position. It may have ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... some dull, phosphorescent light, which seemed to be born of the murky, stagnant air. It was such a strange, sickly, wavering gleam as she had seen above decaying wood, fish, and other substances. All around was absolute stillness. Not a swallow waved his wing nor an insect hummed in that barren immensity. Nature was hushed by some ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... evolution must see that the mental powers of the higher animals, which are the same in kind with those of man, though so different in degree, are capable of advancement. Thus the interval between the mental powers of one of the higher apes and of a fish, or between those of an ant and scale-insect, is immense; yet their development does not offer any special difficulty, for with our domesticated animals the mental faculties are certainly variable, and the variations are inherited. No one doubts that their mental faculties ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... thee! insect meshed in the web in which thou hast entangled limbs and wings! Thou hast not only inhaled the elixir, thou hast conjured the spectre; of all the tribes of the space, no foe is so malignant to man,—and thou ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... he spoke, for the first time, a sudden misgiving, like the pinch of an insect, brushed Barron's consciousness. He had not, as a matter of fact, examined the Dawes letter very carefully, having been, as he now clearly remembered, in a state of considerable mental excitement during the whole time it was in his possession ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gripo, influenco. inform : informi, sciigi. infuse : infuzi. inherit : heredi. initiate : iniciati. inject : ensxprucigi, enjxeti. injection : (med.), klistero. injure : vundi, difekti, malutili. inquest : enketo. inquisitive : sciama, scivolo. insect : insekto. inside : interna, "—out" returnite. insidious : insida. insist : insisti. inspector : inspektoro. inspire : enspiri, inspiri. instigate : instigi. instinct : instinkto. institution : instituto. instructions : instrukcio. insult : ofendi; malhonori. insure : asekuri. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... do not live by the road that leads to Lexington. Everybody does not. Still you live somewhere, and you live next to something. As Dr. Thaddeus Harris said to me (Yes, Harry, the same who made your insect-book), "If you have nothing else to study, you can study the mosses and lichens hanging on the logs on the woodpile in the woodhouse." Try that winter botany. Observe for yourself, and bring together the books that will teach you the laws of growth of those wonderful plants. At the end of a winter ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... harmful to the farmer are the baboons, which infest rocky districts and kill the lambs in such great numbers that the Cape government offers bounties for their slaughter. But no large animal does mischief for a moment comparable to that of the two insect plagues which vex the eastern half of the country, the white ants and the locusts. Of these I shall have something ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... beauteous flower Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine, Rear'd high their flourish'd heads between, and wrought Mosaic, under foot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay Broider'd the ground, more colour'd than with stone Of costliest emblem other creature here, Beast, bird, insect, or worm, durst enter none, Such was their awe of man. In shadier bower More sacred and sequester'd, though but feign'd, Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph Nor Faunus haunted. Here, in close recess, With flowers, garlands, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... a large field of cruelty expanding before me, which I could easily prevail with myself to enter; in which we behold the child plucking a wing and a leg off a fly, to try how the poor insect can perform with half his limbs; or running a pin through the posteriors of a locust, to observe it spinning through the air, like a comet, drawing a tail of thread. If we allow, man has a right to destroy noxious animals, we cannot allow he has a right to protract their pain by a lingering ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... merely of a form of taste; the man who collects foreign stamps, say, or book-plates, or arrow-heads, the connoisseur of a tiny section of one of the lesser schools of Italian painting, the coral-insect who has devoted his life to a participle, first-edition men, and all those various bookworms who, without impropriety be it spoken, are the maggots that breed in the dung of the great. A certain friend of ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... flasks and bottles of liqueurs were reflected like rows of Venetian lanterns. In the evening all the metal and glass of the establishment helped to illuminate it with wonderful brilliancy. The old maid, standing there in her black skirts, looked almost like some big strange insect amidst all the crude brightness. Florent noticed that she was trying to inveigle Rose into a conversation, and shrewdly suspected that she had caught sight of him through the half open doorway. Since he had been on duty at the markets ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... grow on the bark of young oaks, and are occasioned by an insect which wounds the bark of trees, and lays its eggs in the aperture. The lacerated vessels of the tree then discharge their contents, and form an excrescence, which affords a defensive covering for these eggs. The insect, when come to life, first feeds on ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... the relation in which all animated nature stands to us, being a mechanism for purification, this doctrine of the transmigration of the soul leads necessarily to other doctrines of a moral kind, more particularly to a profound respect for life under every form, human, animal, or insect. ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... over a mountain Surges the white of the moon, A cloud comes up like the surge of a fountain, Pressing round and low at first, but soon Heaving and piling a round white dome. How lovely it is to be at home Like an insect in the grass Letting ...
— Bay - A Book of Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... strength of man is an insect's strength In the face of that mighty plain and river, And the life of a man is a moment's length To the life of the stream that will run for ever. And so it cometh they take no part In small-world worries; each hardy rover Rideth abroad and is light ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... indeed that it is now he alone who wills and orders things. He opens the door to whomsoever he pleases, uses his master like something belonging to him, weighs on each of his resolutions, and holds him in his power by dint of his stealthy unremitting efforts. Yes! it's the lion conquered by the insect; the infinitesimally small disposing of the infinitely great; the train-bearer—whose proper part is to sit at his cardinal's feet like a faithful hound—in reality reigning over him, and impelling him in ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... or three days in getting up all our spirit casks to tar their heads, which we found necessary, to save them from the efforts of a small insect to destroy them, we hauled the ship off into the stream, on the 6th, n the morning, intending to put to sea the next day; but an accident happened that prevented it, and gave me a good deal of trouble. We had sent our goats ashore, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... the fish in the river,* and the geese and the feathered fowl of the sky.* He giveth air to the creature that is in the egg. He nourisheth the geese in their pens.* He maketh to live the water-fowl,* and the reptiles and every insect that flieth.* He provideth food for the mice in their holes,* he nourisheth the flying ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... wonderful machine had been here revealed to his gaze—manipulated without a word, marshaled by signs, and composed entirely of strangers! And to think that all this insect-like marvel of industry, so expeditious, and done on so huge a scale, had been going on daily under his own roof, and he had known nothing of it! So this was how his palace was cleaned for him, and why it never showed a sign of wear or the marks of muddy boots? ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... Fairbridge. Fairbridge, to its own understanding, was a nucleus, an ultimatum. It was an example of the triumph of the infinitesimal. It saw itself through a microscope and loomed up gigantic. Fairbridge was like an insect, born with the conviction that it was an elephant. There was at once something ludicrous, and magnificent, and terrible about it. It had the impressiveness of the abnormal and prehistoric. In one sense, it was prehistoric. It was as a giant ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and was steadily growing smaller. Very strong this sensation, and, unless one wrestled with it firmly, translating itself in the mental sphere as a vaguely distressful notion that one was nothing but a tiny insect at war with the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... Auvergne; an incrusting spring, therefore, may, perhaps, be all that is wanting to reproduce, on the banks of the Isis or the Charwell, a rock similar in structure to that of the Limagne. Mr. Kirby, in his "Entomology," informs us, that these larvae ultimately change into a four-winged insect. If you are desirous to examine them in their aquatic state, "you have only, (he says) to place yourself by the side of a clear and shallow pool of water, and you cannot fail to observe at the bottom little ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... was not dead, only badly stunned. The next morning, as he was walking around his granaries, they exploded with a loud noise; and all the rice flew away in the form of insects, and vanished from his sight. This kind of insect which originated from the rice we call doron (from the Spanish word duro), on account of ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... high forms of insect life in which it occurs. Parthenogenesis, we call it—that means ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... more than anything else. But sometimes when he could not find enough of those, or when he wanted a change of food, he would eat almost any sort of berry, and apples and pears as well. Tomatoes, too, he liked once in a while. And he was very fond of sunflower seeds. He would not refuse a fat insect, either, if it flew his way. But these were not the only dainties that Sandy thought good. There was something else—something to be found in trees—for which Sandy sometimes hunted. And before he ...
— The Tale of Sandy Chipmunk • Arthur Scott Bailey
... great-grandson look for the baby-elm. Twenty-two feet of clean girth, three hundred and sixty feet in the line that bounds its leafy circle, it covers the boy with such a canopy as neither glossy-leafed oak nor insect-haunted linden ever lifted ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... feel all that had burst upon me at once come back, step by step, till the truth of my situation stood before me, solid and bare as those cruel rocks. It was late in the afternoon when you could see, in the sunbeams over the shaded ravine, every insect; not a breath of air stirring the leaves, and the great cliffs overhanging, as if just ready to fall. The silence was stifling, and I tried to scream; but the sound of my voice was so faint and childish, among those great rocks, that I threw myself ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... plane trees; then they slowly began to move, dragging their slippers over the frozen soil, taking ten steps or so and then waiting again, rooted as it were to the ground. There was one of them with a huge body and insect-like arms and legs, wearing a black silk rag, with a yellow scarf over her head; there was another one, tall and bony, who was bareheaded and wore a servant's apron; and others, too—old ones plastered up and young ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... grows impatient for the frost, which must fall ere the family may venture into the land of swamps and agues. He looks out upon the flower-beds, glowing with life and quivering in the sunshine, and listens to the incessant shrill-voiced cicada piping from the tree-tops, while the insect-drone, in the heated, languid air, seems to speak of an unending summer; but as "all things come to him who waits," so at length come ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... "dy'd in grain", i.e. fixed, ineradicable. To 'dye in grain' means primarily to colour with the scarlet or purple dye produced by the 'kermes' insect, called 'granum' in Latin, from its similarity to small seeds. Being what is styled a 'fast' dye the phrase is used by extension ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... well, some of you rage at him from the other side of the rock, while I climb up the rope-ladder and close with him! Then some of you prehistoric pachyderms ascend, and we'll chuck that pestersome insect into the ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... followed by rewards and punishments. Also, like all other Hindoos, he was of opinion that when a man dies his soul does not go direct to heaven or to hell, but that it passes into some other body: it may be the body of a human being, or it may be into that of a beast, a bird, a fish, or an insect. And then, after millions of migrations like these, the soul either finds a permanent state of existence according to its fate, or its identity is lost by being ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... somebody else. When we came here we were flealess, but every person we have come near to seems to have contributed some fleas to us, until now we are loaded down with them, and we find in our room at the hotel a box of insect powder, which, is charged in with the candles. The king, who is a boy about three years older than I am, is full of fleas, too, and he jumps around from one place to another, like he was shaking himself to get rid of them. He gets up in the morning and goes out horseback riding, and jumps ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... parasites. The plants shoot up with marvellous rapidity, and glitter with flowers of the rarest hues and shapes, or bear quantities of luscious fruit, pleasant to the eye and sweet to the taste. The air resounds with the hum of insect-life; through the bright green leaves of the banana skim the sparkling humming-birds, and gorgeous butterflies of enormous size float, glowing with every colour of the rainbow, on the flower-scented breezes. But over all this beauty—over the luxuriance ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... listen to me. If I seem cruel and unmanly, it is because I wish to be kind. The hand which sweeps a moth from its circling around a candle, must seem very cruel to the poor insect. I tell you, fairly, Hepworth Closs, it is not so much pride of birth or personal dislike that prompts me to deny my daughter to you. But she is heiress in entail to the Carset title and Houghton Castle, a noble title, without support, unless ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... not lightened by the clergy, professionally gloating over approaching doom, nor by the speculations of the scientists, who were now predicting an insect and aquatic world. Man, they said, could not adapt himself to the Grass—this was proved to the hilt by the tragedy of the Russian armies in the Last War—but insects had, fishes didnt need to, and birds, especially ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... passing on to the next. Another whitethroat follows immediately, and there is not a leaf forgotten nor a creeping thing that can hide from them. Every tree and every bush is visited by these birds, and others of the insect-feeders; the whole summer's day they are searching, and the caterpillar, as it comes down on a thread, slipping from the upper branches, only drops into their beaks. Birds, too, that at other periods feed on grain and seed, now live ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... said the corporal, giving her a most respectful kiss, that thou art good and modest by nature, and art withal so generous a girl in thyself, that, if I know thee rightly, thou would'st not wound an insect, much less the honour of so gallant and worthy a soul as my master, wast thou sure to be made a countess of—but thou hast been set on, and deluded, dear Bridget, as is often a woman's case, 'to please others ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... and lodgings for three pounds a week, and henceforth resisting all Curzon Street temptations, I trudge home through November fogs, to eat a chop in a frouzy lodging-house. I studied the horrible servant as one might an insect under a microscope. "What an admirable book she would make, but what will the end be? if I only knew the end!" I had more and more difficulty in keeping the fat landlady at arm's length, and the nasty child was well beaten one day for lingering about my door. I saw poor Miss ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... piled-up bushes. From the inside of this dozens of tiny blue smoke-reeks curled up into the still morning air; while there rose from it a confused deep murmur, the voices of men and the gruntings of camels blended into the same insect buzz. ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Dolly to a rigid examination that disclosed nothing. Hoofs, legs, bit, mouth, body—everything was as it should be. The saddle and saddle-cloth were innocent of bur or sticker; the back was smooth and unbroken. They searched for sign of snake-bite and sting of fly or insect, but found nothing. ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... commerce is the fibre spun by the larvae or caterpillars of a moth, Bombyx mori, as they enter the chrysalis stage of existence. The silk-growing industry includes the care and feeding of the insect in all its stages. The leaves of the white mulberry-tree (morus alba) are the natural food of the insect, and silk-growing cannot be carried on in regions where this tree does not thrive. Not all areas that produce the mulberry-tree, however, will also grow the silk-worm; the ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... on her bow. Her red hawse-holes showed like glowering and savage eyes. There was indescribably brutal threat in this sudden dart in their direction. It was as if a sea monster had swallowed an insect in the shape of a Hampton boat and now sought a real mouthful. But her great rudder swung to the quick pull of her steam steering-gear and again she sheered, cutting a letter s. The movement brought her past the stern of the Nequasset, ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... "counter-clockwise" as the mathematicians say— i.e., W., S., E., N., instead of with the sun and the hands of a clock; why it should have an unspelling influence is hard to say. "Bogle" is a provincial word for "spectre," and is analogous to the Welsh bwg, "goblin," and to the English insect of similar name, and still more curiously to the Russian "Bog," God, after which so many Russian rivers are named. I may add that "Burd" is etymologically the same as "bride" and is frequently used in ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... spring flowers, and so followed out the season. She made special pets of the birds, locating nest after nest, and immediately projecting herself into the daily life of the occupants. "No one," she says, "ever taught me more than that the birds were useful, a gift of God for our protection from insect pests on fruit and crops; and a gift of Grace in their beauty and music, things to be rigidly protected. From this cue I evolved the idea myself that I must be extremely careful, for had not my father tied a 'kerchief ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... wife, even as we knew her then. He appeared to care no more for human interests, far or near, in large or small, than a crab cares for the stars. I fell asleep chuckling in remembrance of an occasion when Mrs. Fontenette, taking her cue from me, spoke to him of his plant-and-insect lore as one of the many worlds there are within the world, no more displacing it than light displaces air, or than fragrance displaces form or sound. He made her say it all over again, and ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... whence came the power that had reduced many a proud Saratoga to elemental conditions, and "Happy Jack," the mammoth, soot-black, loose-jointed negro porter, placed themselves on either side of him. They made the boy look more like an insect than ever. ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... or if it be discovered that the wine is poisoned, it ought to be poured out, and after purifying the chalice, fresh wine should be served for consecration. But if anything of the sort happen after the consecration, the insect should be caught carefully and washed thoroughly, then burned, and the "ablution," together with the ashes, thrown into the sacrarium. If it be discovered that the wine has been poisoned, the priest should neither receive it nor administer it to others on any account, lest the life-giving ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... the most lovely time of the year. The sun was still warm, but the dreaded black fly and other insect pests of the region had disappeared before the sharp frosts that occurred every night. The hilly banks of the St. Maurice were covered with unbroken forest, and "the woods of autumn all around, the vale had put their glory on." Presently Trenton ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... increase of noxious insects that destroy the fruits of labor. A single pair will destroy hundreds of worms, grubs, moths or beetles in a single day; and when they are present in sufficient numbers no insect or creeping thing escapes their sharp little eyes or their exceeding quickness of motion. As they multiply rapidly, there is no reason why every one of our fruit trees, every shrub and vine, should not have its nest of birdlings. This would be the solution of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... of the whip-poor-will complained over the tops of the woodland in near and far cadence through the warm moonlit air. Beside this and the throb of insect voices there was no sound. "I came out this evening," said Finney, "to tell you that last March in Ohio I saw her." His voice fell at the pronoun ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... not my will, but Thine be done;" but my rebellious heart would not thus be schooled. A moment I dared to ask why she, who loved all human beings, would turn aside from her path to spare the meanest insect that crawls, should have this unutterable load of suffering laid upon her? My burning tears fell over her; I knew not that I wept, until she unclosed her eyes, and wiped from her cheek a lucid drop which had fallen there. She gazed upon me with a radiant smile; a bright gleam ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... frequent mutinies only Craven seemed able to quell. He had sat far into the night, staring gloomily into the blazing fire, smoking pipe after pipe, listening to the multifarious noises of the forest—the sudden distant crash of falling trees, the incessant hum of insect life, the long-drawn howl of beasts of prey hovering on the outskirts of the camp, the soft whoo-whoo of an owl whose cry brought vividly to his mind the cool fragrance of the garden at Craven Towers and the nearer more ominous sounds of muffled agony that came from a tent close ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... Practical Angler) saying, 'for the generality, three or four flies, neat, and rightly made, and not too big, serve for a trout in most rivers, all the summer.' Our ancestors, though they did not fish with the dry fly, were intent on imitating the insect on the water. As far as my own experience goes, if trout are feeding on duns, one dun will take them as well as another, if it be properly presented. But my friend Mr. Charles Longman tells me that, after ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... as he would have swept into his palm an annoying insect. He broke it into many pieces between his sinewy fingers and tossed the bits into ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... bathing them in warm water impregnated with oil of turpentine. Mem. d'Agriculture, An. 1787, Trimest. Printemp. p. 109. I sprinkled some oil of turpentine, by means of a brush, on some branches of a nectarine-tree, which was covered with the aphis; but it killed both the insect and the branches: a solution of arsenic much diluted did the same. The shops of medicine are supplied with resins, balsams, and essential oils; and the tar and pitch, for mechanical purposes, arc ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... bustlings and activities, giving orders, delivering judgments, discharging directions here, there, everywhere that he could find a target. The librarian "showed off"—running hither and thither with his arms full of books and making a deal of the splutter and fuss that insect authority delights in. The young lady teachers "showed off" —bending sweetly over pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting pretty warning fingers at bad little boys and patting good ones lovingly. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... what manner of God is mine. The Mullah cries aloud to Him: and why? Is your Lord deaf? The subtle anklets that ring on the feet of an insect when it moves are heard of Him. Tell your beads, paint your forehead with the mark of your God, and wear matted locks long and showy: but a deadly weapon is in your heart, and ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... legatees, I am not sorry, is in a piteous scrape: I like the King of Sweden no better than I do her and the Emperor; but it is good that two destroyers should be punished by a third, and that two crocodiles should be gnawed by an insect. Thank God! we are not only at peace, but in full plenty—nay, and in full beauty too. Still better; though we have had rivers of rain, it has not, contrary to all precedent, washed away our warm weather. September, a month I generally dislike for its irresolute mixture of warm and cold, has hitherto ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... in Germany, a popular belief, that the Stag-beetle (perhaps the same insect) carries burning coals into houses by means of its jaws, and that it has thus occasioned many dreadful fires. (How convenient would Swing find such a superstition in England!) The Death-watch superstition is too well known to need particular notice in this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... a billowing of frantically writhing fumes, which darted madly in every direction until they ceased to be. The Chief in his insect-like contraption came bolting out of the hole which was the airlock. He was a good half-mile away. The rocket fumes ceased. He kept on going. Joe heard him swear. The Chief felt the utterly helpless sensation of a man in a car ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... are so near to us we have become really intimate with them. We know all their habits, and every insect that harms them. I love to see the tender tendril of a vine stretch for the string that is fastened at a little distance for its support, and then wind about it so gladly. Every morning it is a new excitement to see long festoons of our green curtains, variegated ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... introduced by a later hand. It is really impossible to describe many of them in terms of adequate praise. The downy plum is almost bursting with ripeness: the butterfly's wings seem to be in tremulous motion, while they dazzle you by their varied lustre: the hairy insect puts every muscle and fibre into action, as he insinuates himself within the curling of the crisped leaves; while these leaves are sometimes glittering with dew, or coated with the finest down. The flowers and the vegetables are equally ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... is this! All that befals you, to the very numbering of your hairs, is known to God! Nothing can happen by accident or chance. Nothing can elude His inspection. The fall of the forest leaf—the fluttering of the insect—the waving of the angel's wing—the annihilation of a world,—all are equally noted by Him. Man speaks of great things and small things—God knows ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... the procession was formed of animals familiar to everybody, and among them were cages of monkeys (concerning whose educational development Cosmo Versal had theories of his own) and a large variety of birds, together with boxes of insect ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... agreed Darrow calmly. "It means the death of every living thing from the smallest insect to the largest animal, from the microbe to the very lichens on the stones of Trinity. I agree with the way you look." He laughed a little. "But the case isn't so bad as it sounds," he went on. "If the crust of the earth were to collapse, that would ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood, And winter robing with pure snow and crowns Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs; 10 If spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me; If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast I consciously have injured, but still loved And cherished these my kindred; then forgive 15 This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw No portion ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... dressed in black, and is rather more clerical in appearance than most English curates are nowadays; but he does not wear the collar and waistcoat of a parish priest. He is roused from his trance by the chirp of an insect from a tuft of grass in a crevice of the stone. His face relaxes: he turns quietly, and gravely takes off his hat to the tuft, addressing the insect in a brogue which is the jocular assumption of a gentleman and not the ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... be raised by the garments of the Medes and Assyrians, Virgil is the most ancient writer, who expressly mentions the soft wool which was combed from the trees of the Seres or Chinese; [62] and this natural error, less marvellous than the truth, was slowly corrected by the knowledge of a valuable insect, the first artificer of the luxury of nations. That rare and elegant luxury was censured, in the reign of Tiberius, by the gravest of the Romans; and Pliny, in affected though forcible language, has condemned the thirst ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... with his snout dreadfully swollen, and reported that the beneficent originator in question was the Wasp, which he had found much smeared with undoubted honey, having applied his nose to it—whence indeed the able insect, perhaps justifiably irritated at what might seem a sign of scepticism, had stung him with some severity, an infliction Reynard could hardly regret, since the swelling of a snout normally so delicate would corroborate his statement ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... cart. It requires to travel in Brittany to form any notion of the detestable vehicles, whether public or "voitures a volonte," in which travellers in this country are condemned to ride. Uncleaned, unpainted, creaking, jolting machines—as fully tenanted with every kind of insect annoyance, as if one were travelling in a hen-house. The horses are good, hardy, enduring little animals, which go their thirty to fifty miles a day without any distress either to themselves or the traveller. The Breton drivers are gentle and kind, making more use of their ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... travelled slowly, crept upon the greenish-brown water almost with the deliberation of some monstrous water-insect. For she journeyed against the tide, and as yet there was little wind, though what there was blew from the north. The crew had to work hard in the burning sun-rays, going naked upon the bank and straining ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... irritation, like that produced by the teasing buzz of some venomous insect, affected Walden's nerves. He looked at the porcine proportions of his brother minister with an involuntary sense of physical repulsion. Then ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... about noon of a remarkably fine day, Harold could not help remarking on the strange stillness which pervaded the air. No sound was heard from beast, bird, or insect; no village was near, no rippling stream murmured, or zephyr stirred the leaves; in short, it was a scene which, from its solitude and profound ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... web was, with incredible diligence, completed; nor could I avoid thinking that the insect seemed to exult in its new abode. It frequently traversed it round, examined the strength of every part of it, retired into its hole, and came out very frequently. The first enemy, however, it had to encounter was another ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... sometimes both: his faithful Dandie Dinmont would be in attendance and perhaps one of his children walking at his side. His walk would be swift and eager, with his eye wandering restlessly around to observe all that he passed: 'it seemed as if no bird or beast or insect, scarcely a cloud in the sky, passed by him unnoticed, unwelcomed.' So too with humanity—in breadth of sympathy he resembled 'the Shirra', who became known to every wayfarer between Teviot and Tweed. Gipsy boy, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... out of the sixth forest and passed near the clear waves of a brook, he saw a wasp struggling in the water and pitied the insect. So he took a dry branch and held out one end of it to the wasp, that it might crawl up on it and then use its wings. But this wasp happened to be the queen of all the wasps in the woods, and when she found herself ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... for the cricket, but the little black insect hopped to one side, and then, all of a sudden he began to laugh. Oh, how hard ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... eggs, sweet milk. Lead, Strong lemonade, Epsom salts. Opium and other narcotics, Emetics, cold douche, and heat. Phosphorus, Magnesia in copious draughts. Zinc, White of eggs, sweet milk. Mad-dog bite, Apply fire in some form to the wound, thoroughly and immediately. Bite of insect, Ammonia, applied freely. Bite of serpent, Same as for mad dog, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... to one unaccustomed to it, but which they say has become more acceptable to them, from habitual use, than purely fresh water. This spot, is the healthiest and most favorable for the prolific production of certain forms of insect life I ever was in, and I spend the liveliest night here I ever spent anywhere. These people professed to give me a bed to myself, but no sooner have I laid my head on the pillow than I recognize the ghastly joke ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... like the castle of St. Elmo at Naples. In our walk we picked up a species of locust, the sauterelle of this country, of a pale, dirty brown, and somewhat more than three inches in length. Thanks to the great cleanliness of the Hotel de Beauveau, this was the first insect which we had as yet met with at Marseilles. In a climate, indeed, of a certain degree of heat, perpetual scouring and sweeping becomes absolutely necessary in all comfortable establishments, and these little ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... the crimson ray By changes comes and goes, As rosy-hued Aurora's play Along the polar snows; Gay as the insect-bird that sips From scented flowers the dew— Pure as the snowy swan that dips Its wings in waters blue; Sweet thoughts are mirrored on her face, Like clouds on the calm sea, And every motion is a grace, Each word ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... shone down upon the fields covered with yellow grain. Far in the distance carriage-wheels softly slipped along the road. There was a torpor in the air—not a bird's cry, not an insect's hum. Gorju cut himself a switch and scraped ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... When insect wings are glistening in the beam Of the low sun, and mountain-tops are bright, Oh, let me, by the crystal valley-stream, Wander amid the mild and mellow light; And while the wood-thrush pipes his evening lay, Give me one lonely hour to hymn ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... of his oaken walls, and called from morning to night. Hard-working parents rushed hither and thither, snatching, digging, or dragging their prey from every imaginable hiding-place. It was woful times in the insect world, so many new hungry mouths to be filled. All this life seemed to stir the young kings: they grew restless; they were late. Their three little heads, growing darker every day, bobbed this way and that; they changed places in the nest; they thrust out small wings; above all and through ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... Maerchen formulae is the story of Oengus and Etain. Etain and Fuamnach were wives of Mider, but Fuamnach was jealous of Etain, and transformed her into an insect. In this shape Oengus found her, and placed her in a glass grianan or bower filled with flowers, the perfume of which sustained her. He carried the grianan with him wherever he went, but Fuamnach raised a magic wind which blew Etain away to the roof of Etair, a noble of Ulster. She ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... dress in the way grasshoppers do. Jakie was in his cage, but he noticed the stranger instantly, and I opened the door for him. He went at once to look at the grasshopper, and when it hopped he was so startled that he hopped too. Then he picked the insect up, but he did not know what to do with it, so he dropped it again. Again the grasshopper jumped directly up, and again the jay did the same. This they did over and over, till every one was tired laughing at them. It looked ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... the Halicti (Chapters 12 and 13) have already appeared in an abbreviated form in "The Life and Love of the Insect," translated by myself and published by Messrs. A. & C. Black (in America by the Macmillan Co.) in 1911. With the greatest courtesy and kindness, Messrs. Black have given me their permission to include these two chapters in the present volume; they did so without fee or consideration of any kind, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... thread of its own spinning, was endeavoring, as is the fashion of that creature, to swing itself from one beam in the roof to another, for the purpose of fixing the line on which it meant to stretch its web. The insect made the attempt again and again without success; at length Bruce counted that it had tried to carry its point six times, and been as often unable to do so. It came into his-head that he had himself fought just six battles against the English ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... ground, when the repetitious woods held no new revelation of tree or flower, or hazy, flickering insect dandering through the yellow sunshine and the olive-tinted shadow and the vivid green foliage, the very ground had a word ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... happy and justly very proud of her present. The insect is about the size of an ordinary black beetle. Around the body is firmly fastened a gold band. A gold strap is riveted to this and passes down the back around and under the body, and is welded upon the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... mutations observed in Drosophila in four groups, corresponding in his opinion to the four pairs of chromosomes occurring in the cells of the insect. After the meiotic or reduction divisions each gamete of course contains in its nucleus four single chromosomes. One of the four pairs consists of the sex-chromosomes. All the factors of one group are contained in one chromosome, ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... disappeared. Just as I was going down to find out where it landed, I saw it again skimming across a field, and heading straight for the brown band beneath me. It was outlined against the shell-racked earth like a tiny insect, until just northwest of Fort Douaumont it crashed down upon the battlefield. A sheet of flame and smoke shot up from the tangled wreckage. For a moment or two I watched it burn; then I went back to the ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... which can have no object but to do us injury, by spreading a groundless alarm in those countries of Europe where our wheat is constantly and kindly received. It is a mere assassination. If the insect they pretend to fear, be the Hessian fly, it never existed in the grain. If it be the weevil, our grain always had that; and the experience of a century has proved, that either the climate of England is not warm enough to hatch the egg and continue the race, or that some ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... roots, for a small portion of the stumps remained attached to the thorax. The edge of the fracture was in all cases straight, not ruptured; there is, in fact, a natural seam crossing the member towards its root, and at this point the long wing naturally drops or is jerked off when the insect has no further use for it. The white ant is endowed with wings simply for the purpose of flying away from the colony peopled by its wingless companions, to pair with individuals of the same or other colonies, and thus propagate and disseminate ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... chosen, and both are bad when they are basely chosen; but of the two, I repeat, it is restraint which characterizes the higher creature, and betters the lower creature: and, from the ministering of the archangel to the labour of the insect,—from the poising of the planets to the gravitation of a grain of dust,—the power and glory of all creatures, and all matter, consist in their obedience, not in their freedom. The Sun has no liberty—a dead leaf ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... tyranny. When the day comes that mind is sovereign, I will give myself into the hands of this life. But meanwhile I will know myself for what I am—a bubble upon the surface of a whirling torrent, an insect borne aloft ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... seem inexplicable are explicable as due to the more frequent survival of individuals that have varied in favourable ways. We are enabled to understand such marvellous simulations as those of the leaf-insect, those of beetles which "resemble glittering dew-drops upon the leaves;" those of caterpillars which, when asleep, stretch themselves out so as to look like twigs. And we are shown how there have arisen ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Oregon trees of such enemies that little thought or attention has been given to this phase of the subject. In a few localities where caterpillars have attacked the foliage they have been quickly eradicated by an arsenic spray. Fumigating will kill insect life. A bacterial disease that has made its appearance in California has not been seen in this state. Winter spray of lime and sulphur will kill moss and lichens, which are about the only parasites that attempt to ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various
... when at one of their many halts Murray's heart sank very low, for generally when all was silent save for some strange cry of night bird, croak of reptile, or weird whirr of insect that seemed to be magnified in power by the heated misty air, the black's fingers would tighten upon the lad's arm with spasmodic suddenness, in company with what seemed to be the piercing humming trumpet of a mosquito. Twice ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... seem to be collected in one place. This flocking of the birds in the hills must, I think, be accounted for by the fact that birds are by nature sociable creatures, and that food is particularly abundant. In a dense wood every tree offers either insect or vegetable food, so that a large number of birds can live in company without fear of starving each other out. In the plains food is less abundant, hence most birds that dwell there are able to gratify their fondness for each other's society only at roosting ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... curse rather than a blessing to agriculture. This exhaustive system of cultivation, the destruction of forests, the rapid and almost constant decomposition of organic matter, together with the great multiplicity of insect and fungus diseases that appear every year, make the Southern agricultural problem one requiring more brains than that of the North, East or West. The advance of civilization has brought, and is constantly bringing, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... you for the kind part which you take in my health and life: as to the latter, I am as indifferent myself as any other body can be; but as to the former, I confess care and anxiety, for while I am to crawl upon this planet, I would willingly enjoy the health at least of an insect. How far these waters will restore me to that, moderate degree of health, which alone I aspire at, I have not yet given them a fair trial, having drank them but one week; the only difference I hitherto find is, that I sleep better than ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... we may be in the presence of frequencies as far removed from light as light is from sound. If, then, we may follow the analogy from our highest senses, we seem to get a clear explanation of the mystery of insect discrimination. The insect, in her then state, could have no pleasure in the presence of certain plants, their modes of frequency being out of sympathy with that particular Insect Life, and, it may be conceived that, not only ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... if he did send any news it would be to the Bug Hunter's Review, describing the life of an insect on ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... midst of my cares and tribulations. A slight drizzling rain began to fall. The stillness of a prairie is a damper to the best of spirits—the entire suspension of all noises and sounds, not even the tick of an insect to break the black, dull, dark monotony, is a wet blanket to cheerfulness. I really think the stillness of a large prairie is one of the most painful sensations of loneliness, a man ever encountered. The sombre ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... "The Mason-bees, Experiments" and "Exchanging the Nests" form the last three chapters of "Insect Life", translated by the author of "Mademoiselle Mori" and published by Messrs. Macmillan, who, with the greatest courtesy and kindness have given me their permission to include a new translation of these chapters in the present ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... she said. "See, it is as heavy as an elephant yet as delicate as an insect. The moon climbs over it and looks at it with a monkey's maliciousness. She does not look like the country moon at Joinville. At Joinville I have a path—a flat path—with the moon at the end of it. She is not there every night; but she returns faithfully, full, red, familiar. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... however, that his proceedings were altogether free from contemporaneous criticism; a venerable crow sitting on a branch above him displayed great interest in his occupation, and, hopping down a few moments afterwards, disposed of some worm-eaten nuts, a few larvae, and an insect or two, with languid dignity and without prejudice. Certain incumbrances, however, still resisted the squirrel's general eviction; among them a folded square of paper with sharply defined edges, that ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... upon them by their Egyptian taskmasters, and then in rapid succession follow the plagues,—the water of the Nile turned to blood, the reptiles swarming even into the king's chambers, the pestilence scourging man and beast, the insect-cloud heralding the locusts, the pelting hail and the fire running along the ground, the thick darkness, and the smiting of the first-born. Then come the passage of the Red Sea and the escape from bondage, closing the first part. The second part opens ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... counterpart with us, except perhaps at Blackpool. What is, however, peculiar to Scheveningen is its expanse of sand covered with sentry-box wicker chairs. To stand on the pier on a fine day in the season and look down on these thousands of chairs and people is to receive an impression of insect-like activity that I think cannot be equalled. Immovable as they are, the chairs seem to add to the restlessness of the seething mass. What a visitor from Mars would make of it is a mystery; but he could hardly fail ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... a Hospital to Recuperate—The Bad Boy Discourages Other Boys from Running Away with the Circus—He Makes Them Water the Camels, Curry the Hyenas and Put Insect Powder on the Buffaloes. ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... The outer leaves discarded when preparing vegetables for the table, the stalks and stems, and the peelings of apples, potatoes, etc., should all be used for stock, care being taken, of course, to cleanse them well first, cutting out any insect-eaten or decayed parts. ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... that he may reap? The so-called agricultural ants gather what they have not sown, and reap what they have not planted. Man sows that he may gather; breeds that he may use; and accomplishes civilization by an ever-increasing mastery and adaptation of natural forces. An insect may float with the current on a chip; but what one ever put a chip into the water? A beaver may build a dam; but what beaver ever turned the heightened water on a wheel? The dog may lie in a sunny spot; ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell
... annoyance similar to that which teased Uncle Toby—namely, the hovering of a bee about his head. To relieve himself from the tiny tormentor, he laid down his knife and fork, and attempted to beat off the insect with his hands. It soon flew out at the window; but behold! the laird's knife and fork had disappeared. They were searched for all over the table, and under the table; nowhere could they be found; but when their owner reached home ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... trembled fast—every quiver seemed like the pant of an animal athirst, laid down at a well and drinking; and the well proved quite full, gloriously clear; it rose up munificently of its own impulse; I saw the sun through its gush, and not a mote, Lucy, no moss, no insect, no atom in the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... into various channels; the gall insects turn it into channels to suit their ends when they sting the leaf of a tree or the stalk of a plant, and deposit an egg in the wound. "Build me a home and a nursery for my young," says the insect. "With all my heart," says the leaf, and forthwith forgets its function as a leaf, and proceeds to build up a structure, often of great delicacy and complexity, to house and cradle its enemy. The current of life flows on blindly and takes any form imposed upon it. ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... of a rare mosquito is reported by the South-Eastern Union of Scientific Societies. It seems that the insect had worked its passage to the British Museum. We think that a sharper look-out should be kept on mosquitoes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... measure of propitiatory sacrifice. We read in the li chao chuan,[6] or Divine Panorama, that "every living being, no matter whether it be a man or an animal, a bird or a quadruped, a gnat or a midge, a worm or an insect, having legs or not, few or many, all ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... And the insect life that thy warm breath wakes Now people earth and air; And the carolling birds have come back to dwell In the charms of thy presence fair. Need we wonder all hearts with joyous beat Watch the changes thou dost bring, ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... sir," replied the Woggle-Bug, and drawing a book from its pocket the strange insect turned its back on the company and sat down ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum. |
