"Stoat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and drive toward the Wolves that I had caught a glimpse of through the scud. She hadn't got halfway there when the mainmast came down (bringing nearly everything with it) and hung over the starboard quarter, dragging the vessel down like a stoat hanging to ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... a rustle in the hedge made them both start. Adam turned quickly round, but nothing was to be discovered. "'Twas, most-like, nothing but a stoat or a rabbit," he said, vexed at the interruption: "still, 'tis all but certain there'll be somebody upon the road. Would you mind crossing over to the cliff? 'Tis only a little bit down the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... him, now, if they could get him. In England the natural enemy of the rabbit is detested and persecuted; in the Bluff region the natural enemy of the rabbit is honored, and his person is sacred. The rabbit's natural enemy in England is the poacher, in Bluff its natural enemy is the stoat, the weasel, the ferret, the cat, and the mongoose. In England any person below the Heir who is caught with a rabbit in his possession must satisfactorily explain how it got there, or he will suffer fine and imprisonment, together with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Hester was frightened by an owl which hooted close to the caravan, and Janet had to hold her hand for quite a long time, which is a very uncomfortable thing to do when you are in the berth below, and then, just as she was going off again, a rabbit, pursued by a stoat, screamed right under their wheels, as it seemed, and ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... completely. The Elk and Bear, the Boar and Wolf have gone, the Stag has nearly disappeared, and but a scanty remnant of the original wild Cattle linger on at Chillingham. Still the woods teem with life; the Fox and Badger, Stoat and Weasel, Hare and Rabbit, ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... the Broom-Squire caressingly, "we won't quarrel about words. I didn't mean what you have put on me. I want you to come and be my wife. It isn't only that I've had a quarrel with my sister. There's more than that. There is something like a stoat at my heart, biting there, and I have no rest till you say—'I'll ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... exception of the rabbit, all our English animals are found in Norway—the badger, fox, hare, otter, squirrel, hedgehog, polecat, stoat, and the rest of them. But besides these there are little Arctic foxes and Arctic hares, with bluish-grey coats in the summer and snowy-white ones in the winter. This change of colour is a provision of Nature, rendering ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... to one the better. Go and tell Stoat to saddle the bay mare. Wait in the yard: I will bring the letter ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... shook the bough above him so as to make a sharp rustling noise, and uttered with his compressed lips a sharp screeching sound such as is made by the little white-tailed furry denizen of the wood when trapped or chased by a stoat. ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... unknown to science. They called it "a weasel, perfectly white except at the extremity of the tail, which was black." This animal, highly prized on account of its pretty fur, was not scientifically described until as late as 1829. It is a species of stoat. ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... it. I remember he told me more about the woods than I know myself—and I reckon I could teach his business to any gamekeeper or poacher in England. I don't say as how he knew the difference between a stoat and a weasel—he didn't. A cock-pheasant and a hen-partridge would have been the same to him. But the spirit of it—the meaning of it—he fair raised my hair off—he knew it a darned sight better nor ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... and ash, till they saw at the head of the tide Alef's town, nestling in a glen which sloped towards the southern sun. They discovered, besides, two ships drawn up upon the beach, whose long lines and snake-heads, beside the stoat carved on the beak-head of one and the adder on that of the other, bore witness to the piratical habits of their owner. The merchants, it seemed, were well known to the Cornishmen on shore, and Hereward went up with them unopposed; past the ugly dikes and muddy leats, where Alef's slaves were streaming ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... your forbeiris, frovard fortounes steid And bitter blastes, ay buir with breistis bauld; Luit wanweirdis work and walter ay they wald, Thair hardie hairtis hawtie and heroik, For fortounes feid or force wald never fauld; Bot stormis withstand with stomak stoat and stoik. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... remained motionless, he thrust his wedge-shaped head, and turned it back above the stone as if half in mind to seize my foot; then he drew back, and presently went his way. These weasels often hunt in packs like the British stoat. When I was a boy, my father one day armed me with an old musket and sent me to shoot chipmunks around the corn. While watching the squirrels, a troop of weasels tried to cross a bar-way where I sat, and were so bent on doing it that I fired at ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... The runners were wood-hares. They had "frozen" stiff on the alarm from their sentries. But it was not Gulo who had caused them to depart. Him, behind a tree, they had not spotted. Something remained—something that moved. And Gulo saw it when it moved—not before. It was an ermine, a stoat in winter dress, white as driven snow. Then it caught sight of Gulo, or, more likely, the gleam of his eyes, and ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... lay, this arrow-pointed boat, With a light gold necklace, beaded at her throat, Something there was about her like a stoat That lies in wait to make a silent rush, And there was something in her like a thrush, For she had paddle-wheels, each like a wing. She had a long hornet stern that seemed to hold ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... it again! Lydie, the little super, is screaming like a stoat on the stairs. She says Delage tried to violate her. It's at least the tenth time in a month that she has come out with that story. ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... a gun and hung up by the throat, For the ermine, my son, is the same as the stoat; So when Auntie has got just a little more ermine You can tell her (or not) she is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... give it a name it might go a long way towards solving the case. On the whole, it was probably some creature of the weasel and stoat tribe—and yet it is larger than any of ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... getting rather impatient. "There is no mistake about it. He has lost them as sure as you stand there." And then I proceeded to explain that as the gentleman in question was very stout, and as he, the landlord, was stoat also, he might assist us in this great calamity by a loan ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope
... wing; and though there were creeping things which even midnight did not woo to rest in that vast wilderness, Yorke had imbibed enough of forest lore to know that the noise which he had heard was produced by none of these. A rat in the water-rushes, or a stoat pushing through the undergrowth, would have announced itself in a different fashion. Again the sound was heard, and this time it was no longer the crackling of a twig, but the breaking of a branch; then ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... dear? I am Mrs Ramsden," said the stoat lady, holding out her hand with a very pleasant friendliness. "As the niece of my dear friend and neighbour, allow me to give you a hearty welcome to our shores. This is my daughter, Elma, with whom I hope you will be great friends. I will leave you to talk together while I make my purchases. ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in the hedgerows, and could no more refrain from stopping and peeping than if they had been a couple of spaniels or terriers. Marty was quite sure he saw a yellow-hammer on the boughs of the great ash, and while he was peeping, he missed the sight of a white-throated stoat, which had run across the path and was described with much fervour by the junior Tommy. Then there was a little greenfinch, just fledged, fluttering along the ground, and it seemed quite possible to catch it, till it managed to flutter under the blackberry bush. Hetty ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... had gone to work indeed with the tenacity and the tact that distinguished him. Once on a line, he hunted it with the ruthlessness of a stoat. But this time, it seemed, he had met his match. If Monkey was cunning as a fox, Joses was wary ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... bury themselves in it. But this was not all, for he made the little things his constant companions, when he himself went out for exercise. And didn't they scamper and didn't they dance, and frolic, and run! Many a rat, and stoat, and polecat had reason to wish them far away, I ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... faint to catch A weary bee. And scarce it pushes Its gentle way through strangling rushes Where the glossy kingfisher Flutters when noon-heats are near, Glad the shelving banks to shun Red and steaming in the sun, Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat Burrows, and the speckled stoat; Where the quick sandpipers flit In and out the marl and grit That seems to breed them, brown as they: Naught disturbs its quiet way, Save some lazy stork that springs, Trailing it with legs and wings, Whom the shy fox from the hill Rouses, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... families, projected as it were by Nature, and brought forth by her in the natural course of events and after a long time, of which some contain but two members, as the ass and the horse, others many members, as the weasel, martin, stoat, ferret, &c., and that on the same principle there are families of vegetables, containing ten, twenty, or thirty plants, as the case may be? If such families had any real existence they could have been formed only by crossing, by the accumulation of successive variations ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler |
