"Moult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fall the loon (Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, to moult and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with his wild laughter before I had risen. At rumor of his arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert, in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with patent rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses. They come rustling ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... by the middle of March. They were all young ones, waiting for the completion of their second moult before taking to the sea. The old feathers hung in untidy tufts, and the birds were often in a wretched plight owing to the wind and drift-snow. Many were added to the bleaching carcases which fill ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... her through the moult, till her castings all were pure, And have steep'd and clean'd each gorge ere 'twas fix'd upon the lure; While now to field or forest glade I can my falcon bring Without a pile of feather wrong, on body, breast, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... fortnight Akka observed that the time was approaching for her to moult and put on a new feather dress so as to be ready to fly. For a whole moon she would be unable to carry food to the baby eaglet, and he ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... and the latter six; during the third period the former laid six and the latter not any. From this time on no eggs were received from either group. The decline in egg production was probably due in large part to the fact that the hens began to moult during the second period, and continued to do so during ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... sky like purple amethysts, while beyond the straits the western ocean stretched its pale molten gold to the sunset. Gresson waxed lyrical over the scene. 'This just about puts me right inside, Mr Brand. I've got to get away from that little old town pretty frequent or I begin to moult like a canary. A man feels a man when he gets to a place that smells as good as this. Why in hell do we ever get messed up in those stone and lime cages? I reckon some day I'll pull my freight for a clean location ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... a more human softening than the same vices in the saloon bars of our own time. I greatly prefer Mr. Richard Swiveller to Mr. Stanley Ortheris. I prefer the man who exceeded in rosy wine in order that the wing of friendship might never moult a feather to the man who exceeds quite as much in whiskies and sodas, but declares all the time that he's for number one, and that you don't catch him paying for other men's drinks. The old men of pleasure (with their tooral ooral) ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... upon the young buds of their native bush, where they pass a sluggish and uneventful existence in sucking up the juice from the veins on the one hand, and secreting honey-dew upon the other. Four times they moult their skins, these moults being in some respects analogous to the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into chrysalis and butterfly. After the fourth moult, the young aphides attain maturity; and then they give origin, parthenogenetically, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... hundred years it is worn threadbare and useless. If some of its milder tenets still cling to and fit our vast mediocrity, it is equally certain that the intellectual giants have moulted it as the birds moult their plumage in a dying year, and have taken on the bright new garments of higher thought, the spring plumage of ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no feather.[35] I have of late (but wherefore I know not) lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a steril promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... laughed. "I've been driving with Lohengrin. He's got a pair of swans that can do a mile in 2.10—but it makes them moult like the devil." ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... modified in order to escape the numerous enemies to whose attacks they are exposed at this period of their existence. Their colours and markings have become marvellously adapted to conceal them among the foliage of the plant they live upon, and this colour often changes completely after the last moult, when the creature has to descend to the ground for its change to the pupa state, during which period a brown instead of a green colour is protective. Others have acquired curious attitudes and large ocelli, which cause them to resemble the head of some reptile, or they have curious horns or ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... ascend. A tangled mass of twisted living rattan, is therefore, a sign that at some former period a large tree has fallen there, though there may be not the slightest vestige of it left. The rattan seems to have unlimited powers of growth, and a single plant may moult up several trees in succession, and thus reach the enormous length they are said sometimes to attain. They much improve the appearance of a forest as seen from the coast; for they vary the otherwise monotonous tree-tops with feathery crowns of leaves rising clear ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... S'issoit une gote de sang Del fer de la lance au sommet, Et jusqu'a la main au vaslet Coroit cele gote vermoille.... A tant dui autre vaslet vindrent Qui chandeliers an lors mains tindrent De fin or ovrez a neel. Li vaslet estoient moult bel Qui les chandeliers aportoient. An chacun chandelier ardoient Dous chandoiles a tot le mains. Un graal antre ses dous mains Une demoiselle tenoit, Qui avec les vaslets venoit, Bele et gente et bien acesmee. Quant cle fu leans antree Atot le graal qu'ele ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... that monarch, litters, borne by two horses, first appeared; but these were uncovered, and used, only, by ladies of the court. Froissart describes Isabel, the second wife of Richard the Second of England, as having been borne "en une litiere moult riche, qui etoit ordonnee pour elle;" and this kind of vehicle, during the reigns of several succeeding Monarchs, appears to have been used by women of distinction in this country, but, only, it is to be observed, ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... the larva of a Chthamalus (Balanus punctatus of British authors), after having kept alive and moulted once, these organs are distinctly shown as articulated antennae (without a case), directed forwards: hence, before the first moult in Scalpellum, we have two pair of antennae in process of formation. Anteriorly to the bases of these smaller antennae is seated the heart-shaped eye, (as I believe it to be,) .001 in diameter, with apparently a single ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... trouble and expense of keeping them will depend on the question of winter eggs. It is contrary to the natural habits of chickens to lay in winter, and if left to themselves they will practically stop laying when they begin to moult or shed their feathers in the fall, and will not begin again until the warm days of spring. When eggs are scarce it will be a great treat to be able to have our own supply instead of paying a ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... with the Orthoptera, which assume their adult state, not by a single metamorphosis, but by a succession of moults, the young males of some species at first resemble the females, and acquire their distinctive masculine characters only at a later moult. Strictly analogous cases occur at the successive moults of ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... you why; so shall my anticipation preuent your discouery of your secricie to the King and Queene: moult no feather, I haue of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custome of exercise; and indeed, it goes so heauenly with my disposition; that this goodly frame the Earth, seemes ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... "I'll moult all my feathers," so he moulted all his pretty feathers. Now there was a little girl walking below, carrying a jug of milk for her brothers and sisters' supper, and when she saw the poor little bird moult all its feathers, ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Henceforward shalt thou see such officers! See, how he scorns all human arguments, So that no oar he wants, nor other sail Than his own wings, between so distant shores! See, how he holds them, pointed straight to heaven, Fanning the air with the eternal pinions, That do not moult themselves like mortal hair!" And then, as nearer and more near us came The Bird of Heaven, more glorious he appeared, So that the eye could not sustain his presence, But down I cast it; and he came to shore With a small vessel, gliding swift and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... is a layer, is the layer, maturing as she does about four weeks later than the Rhode Island Reds, and so escaping that fatal early fall laying with its attendant moult and eggless interim until March! On the other hand, the Buff Rock matures about a month earlier than the logy, slow-growing breeds, and so gets a good start before the cold ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Parliamentary hand Familiar with the ropes, Those perils you will understand With which a Premier copes Whose big battalions run to seed, Having indulged a taste for slacking, And let their muscles moult for need ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... breeds which always come brown and mottled. Lastly, in the "prize-canaries," which have black wing- and tail-feathers during their first (?) plumage, what colours are the wings and tails after the first (?) moult or when adult? I should be particularly glad to learn this. Heaven have mercy on you, for it is clear that I have none. I am going to investigate this same point with all the breeds of fowls, as Mr. Tegetmeier will procure ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... compliments to your "Correspondent," Atlas, cheri—far from me to justify spelling of my own! But who could possibly have supposed an orthographer loose! Evidently too "ung vieulx qui a moult roule ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... eagles, though there are several exceptions to this statement, and have their plumage more mottled. Furthermore, most if not all of the buzzards, about which anything of the kind is with certainty known, assume their adult dress at the first moult, while the eagles take a longer time to reach maturity. The buzzards are fine-looking birds, but are slow and heavy of flight, so that in the old days of falconry they were regarded with infinite scorn, and hence ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Paynim princesses like Floripas in Fierabras. This heroine exclaims in reference to her father, "He is an old devil, why do you not kill him? little I care for him provided you give me Guy," though it is fair to say that Fierabras himself rebukes her with a "Moult grant tort aves." All these ladies, however, Christian as well as heathen, are as tender to their lovers as they are hard-hearted to their relations; and the relaxation of morality, sometimes complained of in the later chansons, is perhaps more technical than ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... le Fay. The lake was "en la marche de la petite Bretaigne;" "en ce lieu ... avoit la dame moult de belles maisons ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... EPOPS. No. All birds moult their feathers, you know, every winter, and others grow in their place. But tell ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... love! And Sir John riding the wilderness with his murdering crew! May the Lord protect and aid all women from such birds o' passage and of prey! And I thought I had seen the pin-feathers of some such plumage on this man Boyd. But he may moult to a prettier colour. I hope so—but in my heart I dare not believe it. For he is of that tribe of men who would have their will of every pretty petticoat they notice. Some are less unscrupulous than others, that is the only difference. And he seems still to harbour ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... hom qui comenca l'ordre des Freres Mineurs, si ot nom frere Francois ... vint en l'ost de Damiate, e i fist moult de bien, et demora tant que la ville fut prise. Il vit le mal et le peche qui comenca a croistre entre les gens de l'ost, si li desplot, par quoi il s'en parti, e fu une piece en Surie, et puis s'en rala en son ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Tournai and sore pressed, Fredegond saw her enemy delivered into her hand. "La femme," say the chronicles of St. Denis (III. 3 and 4) "pensa de la besogne la ou le sens de son seigneur faillait, qui selon la coutume de femme, moult plus est de grand engieng a malfaire que n'est homme." By some diabolical trick of fascination she persuaded a pair of assassins to penetrate into Sigebert's camp, armed with a "scramasax" she had herself provided. They murdered him as he ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... she had her own religion, lacking some details truly enough, but shaped upon youthful notions of right and wrong. As she had not read very widely, she supposed that she had discovered this religion for herself; she was not aware that everybody else had passed that way—it being the first immature moult in young people ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... not but wonder how Henry stands his evenings here; the Polynesian loves gaiety - I feed him with decimals, the mariner's compass, derivations, grammar, and the like; delecting myself, after the manner of my race, MOULT TRISTEMENT. I suck my paws; I live for my dexterities and by my accomplishments; even my clumsinesses are my joy - my woodcuts, my stumbling on the pipe, this surveying even - and even weeding sensitive; anything to do with the mind, with the eye, with the hand ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... villeggiatura of the Lepidoptera, the amusement programme had reached the last act, and people yawned for something new, when 'sweet charity' came to the rescue, and proposed an entertainment to raise funds for enlarging an ecclesiastical 'Columbary' where aged, unsightly and repentant doves might moult, and renew their plumage. Musical, dramatic, poetic recitations, and tableaux vivants constituted the method of collecting the money, and the selections would have made Rabelais chuckle. We had the most flagitiously erotic passages (rendered in costume) from opera and opera ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... long—and their abdomen terminates in two or three long articulated filaments. One character, which is unique among insects, is peculiar to Ephemerids; the adults issuing from the pupal envelope undergo still another moult in divesting themselves of a thin pellicle that covers the body, wings, and other appendages. This is what is called the subimago, and precedes the imago or perfect state of the insect. The short life of adult May-flies is, with most of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... never moult! I hope you didn't think me extravagant wiring yesterday, instead of writing. I was too busy baking the yeasty dough of my impressions to write a letter worth reading; and when one has practically no money, what's the good of being economical? You know the sole point ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... real persons. "Dan" was Dan Slote, Mark Twain's room-mate; the Doctor who confused the guides was Dr. A. Reeves Jackson, of Chicago; the poet Lariat was Bloodgood H. Cutter, an eccentric from Long Island; "Jack" was Jack Van Nostrand, of New Jersey; and "Moult" and "Blucher" and "Charlie" were likewise real, the last named being Charles J. Langdon, of Elmira, N. Y., a boy of eighteen, whose sister would one day become Mark ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... well might squeal and squawk At having licked the British bird (Lord) HAWKE. But when that HAWKE his brood had "pulled together," That Eagle found it yet might "moult a feather." Go it, ye friendly-fighting fowls! But know 'Tis only "Roosters" who o'er ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... Ganymede should pass away from heaven into temporary eclipse; it is well that before being exposed to the rude gaze of the world he should moult his rainbow plumage in the Cimmeria of the Rajas. Here we shall see him again, a blinking ignis fatuus in a dark land—"so shines a good deed in a naughty world" ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... with live specimens, but failed because I could not get young birds. Now in answer to your question, my belief is that the young bird moults into the winter plumages direct and that this is changed into the full plumage in spring either by a spring moult or by a shedding of the tips of the feathers. This is private because it is theoretical, and for your private use ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... to a great age. Some of these birds have been known to attain an age of seventy years, and one seen by Vaillant had reached the patriarchal age of ninety three. At sixty its memory began to fail, at sixty-five the moult became very irregular and the tail changed to yellow. At ninety it was a very decrepit creature, almost blind and quite silent, having forgotten its former abundant ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... a high-mass, hear the music, enjoy a strange attire, and hate the foul monkhood. Last week, was the feast of the Immaculate Conception. On the eve we went to the Franciscans' church to hear the academical exercises. There were moult and moult clergy, about two dozen dames, that treated one another with illustrissima and brown kisses, the vice-legate, the gonfalonier, and some senate. The vice-legate, whose conception was not quite so immaculate, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... pay over two dollars and a half, and you mustn't get the pink bird without Mrs. Perkins says, and the milliner says, that it won't fade nor moult. Don't buy a light-colored felt because you'll get sick of it in two or three years same as you did the brown one. I always liked the shape of the brown one, and you'll never get another trimmin' that'll wear like ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... written in the French tongue," said Alleyne, "and in a right clerkly hand. This is how it runs: 'A le moult puissant et moult honorable chevalier, Sir Nigel Loring de Christchurch, de son tres fidele ami Sir Claude Latour, capitaine de la Compagnie blanche, chatelain de Biscar, grand seigneur de Montchateau, vavaseur de le renomme Gaston, Comte de Foix, tenant les ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... walking with her step-son Henry on a lawn under the northern window of the picture-gallery, and there the ladies Elizabeth and Anne joined them—the former a cheerful woman, endowed with a large share of her father's genial temperament; joke or jest would moult no feather in lady Elizabeth's keeping; the latter quiet, sincere, and reverent. The marquis himself, notwithstanding a slight attack of the gout, had hobbled on his stick to a chair set for him on the same lawn. Beside him sat lady Mary, younger than ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... for the production of eggs unless the worms have shown, until they began the spinning of their cocoons, every sign of perfect, robust health. Any indication of the disease called flacherie, from which the worms so often die after the fourth moult and turn black from putrefaction, or of any other disease from which silk worms suffer, should be considered as ample reason for not using the cocoons for the purpose in question. They should, on the other hand, be sold for the filature. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... MS. has here a passage which I am unable to understand. After the words "300 lbs. and more," it goes on: "Et la veoit l'en voler moult loing, desquelles pierres il en y avoit plus de lx routes qui tant montoit l'une comme l'autre" The Bern has the same. [Perhaps we might read lx en routes, viz. on ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... subsequent moult the new limbs (maxillae, and anterior and intermediate maxillipedes) come into action, and in this way the Nauplius becomes a Zoea (Figure 29), agreeing perfectly with the Zoea of the Crabs in the number of the appendages of the body, although very different in form and mode of locomotion and even ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... non Bayan pour l'amour au bon chievetain Bayan Cent-iex); adonc n'avoit oncques puis Messires Marc nullui, fors son esclave Piere le Tartar, avecques lequel pouvoit penre soulas a s'entretenir de ses voiages et des choses dou Levant. Car la gent de Venysse si avoit de grant piesce moult anuy pris des loncs contes Monseignour Marc; et quand ledit Messires Marc issoit de l'uys sa meson ou Sain Grisostome, souloient li petit marmot es voies dariere-li courir en cryant Messer Marco Milion! cont' a nu un busion! que veult dire en Francois 'Messires Marcs des millions ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... de France, et lui dit que du Commandement de lui estoit venue a lui, et qu'elle le feroit le plus grand Seigneur du Monde, et qu'il fut ordonne que tretou ceulx qui lui desobeiroient fussent occis sans mercy, et que St Michel et plusieurs anges lui avoient baille une Couronne moult riche ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... primary wing feathers."[303] {161} Neumeister describes a breed of a black colour with white bars on the wing and a white crescent-shaped mark on the breast; these marks are generally rusty-red before the first moult, but after the third or fourth moult they undergo a change; the wing-feathers and the crown of the head likewise then become ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... bookes. Mais sachies pour voir But knowe for trouthe 32 Que es lignes de cest aucteur That in the lynes of this auctour Sount plus de parolles et de raysons Ben moo wordes and reasons Comprinses, et de responses, Comprised, and of ansuers, Que[2] en moult daultres liures. Than in ...
— Dialogues in French and English • William Caxton
... premier et le second volume de Merlin, qui est le premier livre de la table ronde, avec plusieurs choses moult recreative: aussi les Prophecies de Merlin, qui est le tierce partie et derniere: Lettres Gothiques, 2 tom. 4to., maroq. rouge, Paris, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... ain't mine," he said thoughtfully; "but if you're meanin' you're goin' to git your belly full, I calc'late you're li'ble to git like a crop-bound rooster wi' the moult 'fore you're through. An' I ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum |
