"Webbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for his swim. He wore a cloak of coarse material with breeches and had his fingers webbed. The weather was fine; he left the island towards the evening. Illugi thought his journey was hopeless. Grettir had the current with him and it was calm as he swam towards the fjord. He smote the water bravely and reached Reykjanes after sunset. He went into the settlement ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... were a kind of amphibious [Footnote: Amphibious: able to live in water and on land.] animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water,—insomuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers, "like ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... to be found in the more inaccessible parts of America, and the more northern countries of Europe, affords a curious instance of what may be called a compound structure. It has the fore-feet of a land animal, and the hind ones of an aquatic one—the latter only being webbed. Its tail is covered with scales like a fish, and serves to direct its course in the water, in which it ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... extreme of one fore foot, across the shoulders to the other side, 5 feet 2 inches. The fore feet have each five perfect toes; the three inner or first, have long horny nails, slightly curved; the two outer toes have no nails, nor are they webbed. The third and fourth toes are deeply webbed, allowing a wide space between them, which is apparent even in their passive state. The hind feet have four long toes; the first two are webbed as far as the first joint, and the others are strongly webbed ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... hospital. Conscious of his priestly dignity and of the need of supporting it, but shaken by the minor stresses of the situation, the senseless multiplicity of forks and spoons, the bewildering restrictions by which he felt himself to be webbed about, hampered, mastered, Father Tim was as a wild bull in a net, and was even pathetic in his unavailing efforts to prove himself equal to his surroundings. He cleared his throat at intervals, with ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... sound made him look down. A native child or pollywog as the Terrans called them was clinging desperately to the teacher's skirt. His tiny webbed feet clutched at the cloth as he buried his face against her leg. From behind her peered still another child, its baby frog face working spasmodically in the beginnings of a sob. Six or seven others were lying flat on the floor their bodies ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... be? It was heaven-clear to me, solitary and a dreamer; let me but gain the key, I would soon unlock that Eden garden-door. Somewhere yet, I was sure, Imogen's mountains lift their chill summits into heaven; over haunted sea-sands Ariel flits; at his webbed casement next the stars Faust covets youth, till the last trump shall ring him ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... Swap souls with you and lead the cold sea-green Amphibians of Prohibition on, Pallid of nose and webbed of foot, swim-bladdered, Gifted with ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... were rather singular looking tracks, the front feet being five-toed, and the back three-toed, and webbed. Near the slides on the bank the water was muddy, showing that the beaver had been at work early. These animals worked mostly at night, but sometimes at sunset and sunrise. They were indeed very cautious and wary. These dams had just been completed and ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... from whose feasts depart, Smitten with cholera, the Hindoo devotees. The body oozes with a loathsome dew. Its head is red as if sucked full of blood; But all the rest, its hundred legs, and tail, The mailed back, and the wide-webbed prickly wings, Are green, like those base eyes of jealousy Which hope to see a covert murder done. I find the finest needle in the house, And press the point down on the slimy hide. The blunt edge crushes, does not pierce the shape, And brings the straggle that ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... years. They do not appear to change during this period any more than so many Trenton trilobites. Bent up, wrinkled, yellow-eyed, with long upper-lip, projecting jaws, retreating chin, still meek features, long arms, large flat hands with uncolored palms and slightly webbed fingers, it was impossible not to see in this old creature a hint of the gradations by which life climbs up through the lower natures to the highest human developments. We cannot tell such old women's ages because we do not ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a grown beaver is usually about thirty inches long, and something over eleven inches wide; it weighs about sixty pounds. The fore-paws are quite small in comparison with the rest of the body; the hind feet are larger, webbed like a duck's feet, and are the principal motive power in swimming. The most unique feature of the animal's body is the famous mud-plastering tail, which is oft-times a foot long, five inches in width, and an inch in thickness. The colour of the beaver ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... came, till all his markings were distinctly seen. With one hand I pulled a little revolver from my hip pocket, and when the loon was about fifty yards distant, and had begun to sidle around me, I fired: at the flash I saw two webbed feet twinkle in the air, and the loon was gone! Lead could not have gone down so quickly. The bullet cut across the circles where he disappeared. In a few moments he reappeared a couple of hundred yards away. "Ha-ha-ha-a-a," said ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... is found along the beaches and easily identified by the complete neck ring, white upon dark and dark upon light. Like the Sandpipers the Plovers dance along the shore in rhythm with the wavelets, leaving sharp half-webbed footprints on the wet sand. Though usually found along the seashore, Samuels says that on their arrival in spring, small flocks follow the courses of large rivers, like the Connecticut. He also found a single pair building on Muskeget, the famous haunt of Gulls, off the shore of Massachusetts. ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... ground, where they also nest, like our barnyard poultry. Others run along the banks of rivers or on the sea-beaches, where they wade in shallow water to pick up their food, like Snipes and Plovers; while others swim with their webbed, feet and take their food from deep water, like Geese and Ducks. There are a few game birds in this glass case—some Pigeons and Grouse; suppose we finish ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... weaver insisted that this figure represents a frog, because of its webbed feet, but none of the others agreed ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... morning, he would have been surprised at the occupation upon which the boys were engaged. Each was sewing a piece of thin waterproof cloth upon a pair of white woolen gloves; so that the fingers, when outspread, had the appearance of the webbed foot of a frog. ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... himself in a long and rather narrow room, with a high ceiling, duskily lighted by three wide windows that were thickly webbed and dusted, like ancestral bottles of fine crusty Port. A veritable den it was, filled with what seemed to be the wrecks of philosophical apparatus dating back two or three generations—ill-fated ventures on the treacherous main of science. Here a fat-bellied alembic lolled ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... in place of stomach, His webbed feet seemed to burst a sack, His nose was with tobacco black. And his head it went crick crack, Crick, crack. ...
— The Tales of Hoffmann - Les contes d'Hoffmann • Book By Jules Barbier; Music By J. Offenbach
... The situation is either on a bare rock or on ledges of sea-cliffs, in marshes or on weedy shores. The materials are sea-weed, tufts of grass or rushes, or the debris of the shore, heaped together with as little order and constructive art as might be expected from the webbed feet and clumsy bill of these birds, the latter better adapted for seizing fish than for forming a delicate nest. The long-legged, broad-billed flamingo, who is continually stalking over muddy flats in search of food, heaps up the mud into a conical ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Digits not webbed; tips of two outer fingers truncate, having terminal transverse grooves, about twice width of narrowest part of digit; digits of first and second fingers slightly expanded; fingers from shortest to longest, 1-2-4-3, first only slightly shorter than second; three palmar tubercles; ...
— A New Species of Frog (Genus Tomodactylus) from Western Mexico • Robert G. Webb
... presents himself to our notice among the worm-bodied, digitigrade animals. Their broad webbed feet shew that they frequent the water, and in fact, they are not only found in rivers and lakes of most European countries, but at sea. Their elongated body is flattened horizontally, their tail is broad and flat, and forms an excellent rudder for their guidance when in the water. Their short ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... and Drift in Motion. Tables of Lift and Drift. Why Tables of Lift and Drift are Wrong. Langley's Law. Moving Planes vs. Winds. Momentum not Considered. The Flight of Birds. The Downward Beat. The Concaved Wing. Feather Structure Considered. Webbed Wings. The Angle of Movement. An Initial Movement or Impulse Necessary. A Wedging Motion. No Mystery in the Wave Motion. How Birds Poise with Flapping Wings. Narrow- winged Birds. Initial Movement of Soaring Birds. Soaring Birds Move Swiftly. Muscular Energy Exerted ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... knows how awkward are the Anatidae, waddling along on their unelastic webbed toes, and their short legs, which, being placed considerably backward, make the fore part of the body preponderate. Some, however, are formed more adapted to terrestrial habits than others, and notably amongst these may be named Dendronessa sponsa, the summer duck of America. This ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... pretty arched wooden bridge which formed the only entrance to the Mosslands for any but webbed feet, the sun had mastered the clouds, and was shining through the boughs of the tall elms that made a deep nest for the gardener's cottage—turning the raindrops into diamonds, and inviting the nasturtium flowers creeping ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... their mothers for reasons which must always seem obscure to the bachelor. A little breeze was blowing, and the ducks bobbed like corks in the waves, keeping themselves in place with graceful side-strokes of their webbed feet. Sometimes the ducks rose from the water and flew round the trees by Queen Anne's Mansions, or they fled down the lake with outstretched necks like ducks on a Japanese fan, dropping at last into the water ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... named Lady Nelson's Point "as a memorial of the vessel as she was the first decked one that ever entered this port...Mr. Barrallier went on shore with the second mate. They saw black swans and redbills, an aquatic bird so called whose back is black, breast white, beak red and feet not fully webbed. On Sunday 22nd or, according to our sea account the 23rd at noon, I went with two of our crew in the smallest boat to search for a river or stream described by ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... some time—years—before I got rid of the impression left upon me by the first ostrich with which I became acquainted. He lived in an old picture-book, and would nowadays be considered quite out of fashion by up-to-date ostriches, having webbed feet and an improper number of toes. I like to believe that feet of this sort were popular among ostriches at that time, being loath to destroy early beliefs. From the same cause, I have other little private superstitions about the ostrich; there was no ostrich, so far as I can remember, in my ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... frame curiously wrought of moss and sea-shells. Two vases of India china stood on the mantel, filled with spring flowers, crowfoot, anemones, and liverwort, with drooping bells of the twin-flower. The looking-glass that hung over the table in one corner of the room was fancifully webbed with long, drooping festoons of that gray moss which hangs in such graceful wreaths from the boughs of the pines in the deep forest shadows of Orr's Island. On the table below was a collection of books: a whole set of ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a large White Duck swam up to him. She had yellow legs, and webbed feet, and was considered a great beauty on account ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... considerable time as it slowly appropriated the land it had no right to. It moved, she thought, like a twisted drum on very short drumsticks. It had a water-logged appearance. It was bird and fish ordinarily, but now it was pretending to be animal as well—a thing that flew, swam, walked. Its webbed feet patted the ground complacently. It came laboriously towards the wall of the house, then halted. It paused a moment, then turned its eyes up, while Judy turned hers down. The pair of creatures looked at one another steadily ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... he is in the water he can live. But by degrees he is encircled; some wade in and cut off his course; hounds stop him one way and men the other, till, finally forced to land or to the shallow, he is slain. His webbed feet are cut off and given as trophies to the ladies who are present. The skin varies in colour—sometimes a ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... docks were massed and webbed with ship rigging; the water was livened with boats and canoes; the wooden warehouses back of the docks were overtopped by wooden houses in tiers, until high above them all the Capitol itself was ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the whole house, because here were kept Dale's fireman's outfit always ready and handy to be snatched out at a moment's notice. Rachel gazed delightedly at the blue coat hanging extended, with the webbed steel on the shoulder-straps, at the helmet above, the great boots beneath, and the shining ax that dangled near an empty sleeve; but the sight was almost too tremendous for Billy. His lively young imagination could too readily inflate this ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... a change, strange and terrible, passed over the forms of the trampling peasants. Their stature shrank. They grew squat and fat. Their hands and feet were webbed, and their grinning mouths became great, sad, gaping openings by which to swallow worms and flies. Green and yellow and brown were their skins, and when they would fain have cried aloud for mercy, from their throats there would come only the "Krroak! krroak! krroak!" ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... companions of the Greek warrior Diomedes into birds. The beak is large, strong and sharp-edged, the upper mandible terminating in a large hook; the wings are narrow and very long; the feet have no hind toe, and the three anterior toes are completely webbed. The best known is the common or wandering albatross (D. exulans), which occurs in all parts of the Southern Ocean. It is the largest and strongest of all sea-birds. The length of the body is stated at 4 ft., and the weight ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the side plumes of most of the birds of paradise. The four long white plumes which give the bird its altogether unique character, spring from little tubercles close to the upper edge of the shoulder or bend of the wing; they are narrow, gentle curved, and equally webbed on both sides, of a pure creamy white colour. They are about six inches long, equalling the wing, and can be raised at right angles to it, or laid along the body at the pleasure of the bird. The bill is horn colour, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... a belvedere there." Then he arose forthright and going in, searched the by ways of the house till he espied, in a wall corner among the trees, a narrow door between whose posts[FN226] the spider had woven her webs, and said in himself, "Haply the spider hath not webbed over the door, but because death and doom is within." However, he heartened himself with the saying of God the Most High, "Say, nothing shall befall us but what Allah hath written for us;"[FN227] and opening the door, ascended ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... effects of the selection of indefinite variations, and the direct action of the conditions of life. For instance, it is possible that the feet of our water-dogs, and of the American dogs which have to travel much over the snow, may have become partially webbed from the stimulus of widely extending their toes; but it is far more probable that the webbing, like the membrane between the toes of certain pigeons, spontaneously appeared and was afterwards increased by the best swimmers and the best snow-travellers being preserved during many ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... few bees or wasps and several lizards; and the blackberry bushes were full of ants nests, webbed like a spider's but so close and compact as not to admit the rain. A trunk of a tree about 50 feet long lay on the beach, from which I conclude that a heavy sea sets in here with a ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... figures of him, reflections, multiplications of him, ranged there by ranks of hundreds—the Thousand Jizo. From the ceiling above him droop the dingy splendours of a sort of dais-work, a streaming circle of pendants like a fringe, shimmering faintly through the webbed dust of centuries. And the ceiling itself must once have been a marvel; all beamed in caissons, each caisson containing, upon a gold ground, the painted figure of a flying bird. Formerly the eight great pillars ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... astonished they will all be! The astonishment of fools is amusing. I understand myself. Am I a goddess? Amphitrite gave herself to the Cyclops. Fluctivoma Amphitrite. Am I a fairy? Urgele gave herself to Bugryx, a winged man, with eight webbed hands. Am I a princess? Marie Stuart had Rizzio. Three beauties, three monsters. I am greater than they, for you are lower than they. Gwynplaine, we were made for one another. The monster that you are outwardly, I am within. Thence my love for you. A caprice? ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of trouble and bewilderment came over me, as I gave a quick glance round at the bare loft, with its cob-webbed windows and eager little crowd of boys, all expectant and flushed ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... and with the swarthy Kamtschatkans, with their broad faces, protuberant bellies, and thin, ill-formed legs. Passing southwards, we come to the negro tribes, with their sooty skins, broad noses, thick lips, projecting jawbones, and partially-webbed fingers. And then we find ourselves among the squalid Hottentots, repulsively ugly, and begrimmed with filth; or the still more miserable Bushmen. Passing eastwards, after taking leave of the Persian and Indian branches of the Caucasian race, we meet with the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... in the shape of a great bird, which the West Highlanders called the Boobrie, who has a long neck, great webbed feet with tremendous claws, a powerful bill hooked like an eagle's, and a voice like the roar of an angry bull. The lochs, according to popular fancy, are also inhabited by water-spirits. In Sutherlandshire this kind of creature is called the Fuath; there are, Mr. Campbell says, males and females; ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... they crossed the river. Obeying the gods' commands, they carried the little ones over, though they were transformed just as the others. Upon reaching the opposite shore, they were again restored to their natural forms, excepting their hands, which were duck-webbed. These webs were cut with [A]h-ai-[u]-ta's stone knife and thus ...
— The Religious Life of the Zuni Child - Bureau of American Ethnology • (Mrs.) Tilly E. (Matilda Coxe Evans) Stevenson
... good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water—insomuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us, that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers like unto a duck; and some of them, he had little doubt, could the matter be examined into, would be found to have the tails of mermaids; but this I look upon to be a mere sport of fancy, or, what is ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... and enormously strong, were very sloping, and his powerful arms were little more than half as long as would have been expected had they belonged to a human being of his size. The hands and feet were very large and very broad, and the fingers and toes were heavily webbed. His high domed forehead appeared even higher because of the total lack of hair, otherwise his features were regular and well-proportioned. He carried himself easily and gracefully, and yet with the dignity of one accustomed ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... has been pointed out, there have been numerous attempts at flight which remain glorious failures, notably the flying fishes, which take a great leap and hold their pectoral fins taut; the Flying Tree-Toad, whose webbed fingers and toes form a parachute; the Flying Lizard (Draco volans), which has its skin pushed out on five or six greatly elongated mobile ribs; and various "flying" mammals, e.g. Flying Phalangers and ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... home, for he was an aquatic animal; but now that he is full-grown he has passed into another way of living: he breathes, or rather swallows air, and must, as he swims about with his beautifully webbed feet, come to the surface of the water now and then, or he would die. I am sure you know the frog well enough, and you may even have heard the harsh croak from which it has its name, as you have passed some damp meadow or weedy pond, on a summer evening. But I wonder whether you ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... of these animals is very considerable in Brazil, where they take the place of the shrews of Europe; shrew mice and, indeed, the whole of the insectivorous order of mammals, being entirely absent from Tropical America. One kind of these rat-like opossums is aquatic, and has webbed feet. The terrestrial species are nocturnal in their habits, sleeping during the day in hollow trees, and coming forth at night to prey on birds in their roosting places. It is very difficult to rear poultry in this country on account ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... all question the centre of attraction in the fish-house. The birds comprise a darter, a cormorant, a guillemot, and a penguin. The first-named is seldom seen in this country. It is a largish bird with webbed feet, long thin neck, and spear-like bill. When swimming in the water with its body entirely submerged, it looks not unlike a snake forging along. Hence it is also known as the snake-neck. The cormorant and darter, though ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... shot a pair of curious birds, which looked like water-birds, but were living in a dry place and were able to run with great speed. They were of the size of a hen, and had a long beak, long legs and four flat though not webbed toes. At the end of this high llano, we passed the Hacienda of Agua Blanca, a property belonging to the jefe of Juchitan. From here, we descended rapidly over a poor road, coming out at nine onto the straight road from Tapanatepec, at this point four leagues behind ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... was now heard; after depositing them in the antechamber, he was brought to the door of the dining-room by Francois. At a sign from the countess, Francois allowed him to pass in, followed by Mouche with his mouth full and carrying the otter, hanging by a string tied to its yellow paws, webbed like those of a palmiped. He cast upon his four superiors sitting at table, and also upon Sibilet, that look of mingled distrust and servility which serves as a veil to the thoughts of the peasantry; then he brandished his amphibian ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... cramped delusion that things are good merely because they are dusty and immobile. I won't share the fallacy that to call a thing conservative sanctifies it. There is more virtue in a tiled bathroom than in a cob-webbed chapel. If we change this house at all we will ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the tops of the trees. And the impression of the beautiful park was enforced by its reflection, which lay, with the mute magic of reflected things, in the still water, stirred only when, with exquisite motion of webbed feet, the swans propelled their freshness to and fro, balancing themselves in the current where they knew the bread must ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... few bees or wasps, several lizards, and the blackberry bushes were full of ants nests, webbed as a spider's, but so close and compact as not to admit ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh
... between what he should eat for dinner and what he should reserve for breakfast, he fell to, ate sparingly, lit his pipe, and gazed around the wretched room, of which the walls were blue-washed with a most offensive shade of blue, the bare floor was frankly dry mud and dust, the roof was bare cob-webbed thatch and rafter, and the furniture a rickety table, a dangerous-looking cane-bottomed settee and a leg-rest arm-chair from which some one had removed the leg-rests. Had some scoundrelly oont-wallah pinched them for fuel? (No, Damocles, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... settled our account with them we intended going in search of a curious swamp-dwelling tribe, whose feet were reported to be webbed, like those of a duck, and many were the weird and fantastic rumours that reached ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... was flat and broad and sat upon its sloping shoulders without a connecting neck. Its legs were short, but its arms were long, and when standing erect it carried them well in front of an enormous torso. Its short hands and feet were webbed like those of a duck. It had no visible ears, and its nostrils were mere holes above a wide, grinning, thin-lipped mouth, which was always spread in a grin. Its large, round, red eyes had no gleam of intelligence, and its hairless skin, covered with minute, sucker-like scales, lay in loose, ugly ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... grandfather, and great-grandfather. They are all at full length. The philosopher is attired in a long tunic which seems to form a loose suit of scaly armour, borrowed, perhaps, from some fish or reptile, but the feet and hands are exposed: the digits in both are wonderfully long, and webbed. He has little or no perceptible throat, and a low receding forehead, not at all the ideal of a sage's. He has bright brown prominent eyes, a very wide mouth and high cheekbones, and a muddy complexion. According to tradition, this philosopher ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Uncle Dick, "when I wish all horses had been born with webbed feet. The hoof of a horse seems made purposely to cut through a muskeg, and the leg of a horse is just long enough to tangle him up in one. None the less, here is the muskeg, and here we are with our horses, and we must get ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... average man who blended in with all the others who walked the streets that day. No one recognized him; his face did not appear often in public places, except in his own state, and, even so, it was a thoroughly ordinary face. But, as he walked, Senator John Peter Gonzales was keeping a mental, fine-webbed, four-dimensional net around him, feeling for the slightest touch of recognition. He wanted no one to connect him in any way ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... when he stooped and knelt in the snow to tighten a thong slipping from one webbed foot. Below them stretched a plain of shimmering frost-points, bounded by inscrutable walls of black timber. Somewhere within the warmer heart of a swamp a fox yapped hungrily; somewhere within her own heart his whimsical discourse had awakened a sense of the mystery of his wilderness—its friendship ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... necessary to inform readers that in devising this chronicle-piece no attempt has been made to create that completely organic structure of action, and closely-webbed development of character and motive, which are demanded in a drama strictly self- contained. A panoramic show like the present is a series of historical "ordinates" [to use a term in geometry]: the subject is familiar to all; and foreknowledge is assumed to fill in the junctions required ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... man has two sticks, with a kind of hoop at the end, webbed across, and with these they catch and strike the ball. The goal on each side, consisting of two upright posts and a pole across the top, is set up twenty-five feet high; these goals are from forty to fifty rods apart. Every time either party can strike the ball ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... whenever we had time to run down to the lake. They are brown bunchy animals about twenty-three inches long, the tail being about nine inches in length, black in color and flattened vertically for sculling, and the hind feet are half-webbed. They look like little beavers, usually have from ten to a dozen young, are easily tamed and make interesting pets. We liked to watch them at their work and at their meals. In the spring when the snow vanishes and the lake ice begins to melt, the first open spot is always used as a ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... general habits, but smaller in size. They are as fond of ancient abbeys and churches as ever were the monks of old. Indeed, they have many monkish habits and predilections, and chatter over their Latin rituals in the storied towers of old Norman cathedrals, and in the belfries of ivy-webbed churches in ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... are!" she cried, shaking the water off her tail as she scrambled through. Phil noticed that she was as agile in the water as she was clumsy on land, and that two toes on each foot were webbed. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... derives its distinctive title from the Greek words, cheen, a goose, and pous, a foot, in allusion to the resemblance borne by its leaves to the webbed members of that waddling bird which raw recruits are wont to bless for their irksome drill of the goose-step. Incidentally, it may be said that goosegrease, got from the roasted bird, is highly emollient, and very useful in clysters; it also ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... to settlers. It is said there is no spot of land in the State three hundred feet above the sea-level. Men born with fins and webbed feet might enjoy themselves in the lakes and swamps, which form a considerable portion of Florida. Those whose tastes are favorable to timber-cutting, can find a profitable employment in preparing live-oak and other timbers for market. The climate ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... beautiful furs so sought after in the Russian and Chinese markets: the fineness and the lustre of its coat would certainly fetch L80. I admired this curious mammal, with its rounded head ornamented with short ears, its round eyes, and white whiskers like those of a cat, with webbed feet and nails, and tufted tail. This precious animal, hunted and tracked by fishermen, has now become very rare, and taken refuge chiefly in the northern parts of the Pacific, or probably its race ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... several shots had been fired, but wheeled round and round as if to discover what was the cause of the strange noise. Ball, 3 and 5' shot were equally efficacious and more than a dozen fell in a few minutes. These birds have a beautiful black and white plumage with a long neck and bill and webbed feet and weigh five or six pounds each. The flavour is somewhat like ptarmigan and the natives eat them, as usual, without waiting until ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... was bent over a machine of some sort. There were levers, gears, and rollers mounted on a webbed platform no larger than a rather oversized typewriter. Muldoon's eyes went wide at the sight of the greenbacks coming in a steady stream from the interior of the machine and falling into a box at the side. He could see very little else that was in the room, other ...
— Lease to Doomsday • Lee Archer
... waxed and webbed They fall into a dream, And when they wake the ragged robes Are ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... below. "Quonk-quonk!" he would call. And the other wild ducks would answer, "Quonk-quonk-quonk!" And then they would swoop, right down to the little lake and they'd light right on the water. There they would sit, rocking on the little waves or swimming about with their red webbed feet. Oh, the wild ducks loved the ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... horse's shoulder next to the hill. Once in a while the red nose of the Cardinal showed by my stirrup and dropped back, but Jud was holding his horse well and riding with his whole weight in the stirrups and the strain on the back-webbed girth of his saddle where it ought to be. It was a dangerous road if the horse fell, only El Mahdi never fell, although he sometimes blundered like a cow; and the Cardinal never fell when he ran, and the Bay Eagle, who knew all ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... the porcupine ant-eater. It is a mole-like quadruped, with a large bill like a duck's. It spends most of its time in the water, but lives in a burrow on the shore. Its feet are very curious, as they can be changed at the pleasure of their owner. When in the water they are webbed like a duck's, but if the creature comes on shore, the web shrinks, and leaves long sharp claws ready ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... almost indistinguishable. The mother is unceasing in her care and attention. She strokes the backs of the young birds with her bill, playing and fussing around and close to them, as if they could not exist without her constant attention. Now and then she leans over and lifts a broad, black, webbed foot out of the water, holding it up distended, as if to endorse the modern theory that the parent loon teaches her young to swim. They cling to each other and cling to her, as if afraid of being ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a waterfowl; but occasionally when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... is sometimes called the Water Mole. It is, perhaps, the most wonderful animal in the world in its combination, being part bird, part beast, part fish. It has a bill like a duck; five toes with claws and webbed feet; it is covered with thick glossy fur like a seal; it has cheek pouches like a monkey to keep it's food in; it lays two eggs, its voice resembles that of a young puppy, and the young platypuses play like puppies; it lives ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... patch of white on the lower back, are a common sight, flying with quick irregular wing-beats, close to the surface of the troubled waters. When they spy some edible bit floating beneath them, down they drop until their tiny webbed feet just rest upon the water. Then, snatching up the titbit, half-flying, they patter along the surface of the water, just missing being engulfed by each oncoming wave. Thus they have come to be named petrels—little Peters—because they seem to walk upon the water. Without aid from the ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... hatched- this bird, lives on small fish, worms and bugs which it takes on the virge of the water it is seldom seen to light on trees an quite as seldom do they lite in the water and swim tho the foot would indicate that they did it's being webbed I believe them to be a native of this country ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... strength. His thick body was fully three feet long. He weighed at least sixty pounds. His tail was fourteen inches in length and five in width, and on a still night he could strike the water a blow that could be heard a quarter of a mile away. His webbed hindfeet were twice as large as his mate's and he was easily the swiftest ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... motion. Dr. Droon, looking rather apologetic, pointed out to Telzey that her pet was in no pain, that the stungun had simply put her comfortably to sleep. He also explained the use of the two sets of webbed paralysis belts which he fastened about TT's legs. The effect of the stun charge would wear off in a few minutes, and contact with the inner surfaces of the energized belts would then keep TT anesthetized and unable to move until the ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... the flesh is not good to eat. The albatross has been seen fully 1000 miles from any shore. Its power of wing must therefore be very great, but when tired it can walk on the water with its strong webbed feet, and the sound of its tread is said to be heard at a great distance. In the breeding season the albatross retires in company with other sea-birds, particularly the penguin, to some rocky shore to build its nest. The penguins' and albatrosses' nests are always found in company, but the ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... light from the hot rocks Dean saw their faces, in which were owl eyes like those of the first one, but yellow, expressionless and stupid. Their great bodies were yellow: their outstretched hands were webbed. ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... would inherit the same peculiarity, and in the course of several generations there would thus arise a species with short and strong, perhaps curved, beaks just fitted to live on fruits of the kind described. In a similar way the webbed feet of birds that swim were developed by their aquatic habits. And so with the long slender toes of the waders, which are so well fitted for ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... that of the partridge, and the other webbed like that of a goose, its peculiarity consists in mourning over adultery, and loving its master so faithfully that it dies of pity in his arms when it learns that his wife has deceived him. So that ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... with round mouths and very white stomachs, which suddenly appeared upon the surface, jumping at invisible flies. These attracted a number of birds that resembled gulls of a light build. They had coal-black heads, white backs, greyish wings, and slightly webbed feet, pink as coral, with which they seized the small fish, uttering as they did so, a peculiar and plaintive cry that ended in a long-drawn e-e-e. The father of the flock, whose head seemed to be white like ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... motion was not true flight, their wings being mere membranes extended parallel to their sides, and having no movement independent of the body. The bird was, so to say, suspended between them and moved forward by quick strokes of a pair of enormously large webbed feet, precisely as a duck propels itself in water. All these things excited in me no surprise, nor even curiosity; they were merely unfamiliar. That which most interested me was what appeared to ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... showed the disorder of the room, where the alfereza was sitting, and pierced the dusty and spider-webbed conches of the windows. The dame, according to her idle custom, was dozing in a fauteuil. To deaden the sound of the bombs, she had coifed her head in a handkerchief, from which escaped her tangled hair, short and thin. This morning she had not been to mass, not because she did not wish it, but ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Turtle seldom wandered far from the banks of the creek—for the best of reasons. He was anything but a fast walker. In fact, one might say that he waddled, or even crawled, rather than walked. But in the water he was quite a different creature. By means of his webbed feet he could swim as easily as Mr. Crow could fly. And he could stay at the bottom of Black Creek a surprisingly long time before he came up for a breath of air. Indeed, Mr. Crow sometimes remarked that he would be just ...
— The Tale of Timothy Turtle • Arthur Scott Bailey
... aspiring palms so slender of shaft that their unceasing swaying in the still air seemed an act of unconscious affectation for the display of huge bunches of gaudy fruit, seductive and dulcet to the taste. Spider-webbed tree-ferns with furry, water-bespangled trunks stood in crowded groves on the brink of spray-creating cascades and along the margins of cool rivulets which murmured as they hurried ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Nature. "That is the way he gives warning to his friends whenever he discovers danger. Did you notice how he used his tail to aid him in swimming? He turns it almost on edge and uses it as a rudder. Those big, webbed hind feet are the paddles which drive him through the water. He can stay under water a long time—as much as five minutes. See, he has just ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... watched through the webbed window the lapidary's fingers prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails. Dust slept on dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... geese when they reached the tree. As he spoke, Turkey Proudfoot flapped himself up and settled on a low branch. At last he felt safe. He knew that the geese wouldn't follow him up there. With their webbed feet they never roosted ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Messieurs et Mesdames" he cries, flourishing a war-spear some nine feet in length. "Come and see the wonderful Peruvian maiden of Tanjore, with webbed fingers and toes, her mouth in the back of her head, and her eyes in the soles of her feet! Only four sous each, and an opportunity that will ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... slithering another creature with a gigantic, quivering, jelly body. Kirby saw to his horror that, in addition to four short legs with webbed, claw-tipped feet, there sprouted from the body a number of octopus tentacles. From the scabrous mottle of the head, cruel, unintelligent, bestial eyes glared at the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... he would have remained there so, idly watching, no one could have told; the man himself could not have told; for at last, interrupting, awakening, a new actor appeared. Answering, with a great quacking and beating of webbed feet, the flock sprang a-wing; and almost before the shower of water drops they scattered in their wake had ceased, a road waggon, with a greybearded old man on the seat, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... horizontal flattened tail, which is nearly of an oval form, but rises into a slight convexity on its upper surface, and is covered with scales. His fore-feet are armed with nails, and serve for the purpose of hands— indeed, he vies with the monkey in the use he can make of them. The hind-feet are webbed, and with these—together with his tail, which acts as a rudder—he is enabled to swim rapidly through the water. The beaver is a rodent, with a short head and broad blunt snout, and his incisor teeth are remarkably large and hard, enabling him to bite through ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... purify Webbed and inward-turning eye; These shall show thee treasure hid, Thy familiar fields amid; And reveal (which is thy need) Every man ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... be a great wizard. He told her moreover that midwife Megges was an angel (here the crowd laughed) sent to kill the said infant, who really was his own child, as might be seen by its black eyebrows and cleft tongue, also its webbed feet, and that he would appear in the shape of the ghost of Sir John Foterell to save it and give it to her, which he did, saying the Lord's Prayer backwards, and that she must bring it up "in ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... over the bottom of the foot and to all parts of the frog and at top of hoof joining the hair, and cover the entire wall of the foot. The horse should stand on a deep, soft bed. Cover with blankets. Feed bran mashes, vegetables and hay; no grain. Use wide-webbed shoes two weeks ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... we might send to you after ousting its disagreeable occupant. After much searching, we found a group of them—quite a tarantula village, in fact. Their wonderful little houses are closed on the outside by a circular, many-webbed mesh, two or three inches across, and this web betrays the spider's den to the person who knows the tricks of the trade. Directly underneath it you come upon the tiny circular trap-door, which you will notice in the nest we send with these letters. You will see how wonderfully ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... traveller had a view of the best of the old Virginia life, its wealth of beauty, its home comfort, its atmosphere of serenity, of old memories, rich and vivid, like the wine that lay cob-webbed in ancestral cellars, of gracious hospitality, of a softly tinted life like the color in old pictures and the soul in old books. The gentle humorist lived to see that life pass away from the Old Dominion and all too soon he vanished into another world ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... even four feet long; a large one weighed twenty pounds: on the island of Albemarle they seem to grow to a greater size than elsewhere. Their tails are flattened sideways, and all four feet partially webbed. They are occasionally seen some hundred yards from the shore, swimming about; and Captain Collnett, in his Voyage says, "They go to sea in herds a-fishing, and sun themselves on the rocks; and may be called alligators in miniature." It must not, however, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... soft, unpacked snow. It was hard, monotonous work, with none of the joy and blood-stir that went with flying over hard surface. Now one man to the fore in the snowshoes, and now the other, it was a case of stubborn, unmitigated plod. A yard of powdery snow had to be pressed down, and the wide-webbed shoe, under a man's weight, sank a full dozen inches into the soft surface. Snowshoe work, under such conditions, called for the use of muscles other than those used in ordinary walking. From step to step the rising foot could not come up and forward on a slant. It had to be raised perpendicularly. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... miser, who is excessively careful in hoarding up the necessaries of life. The coot [*Douay: porphyrion. St. Thomas' description tallies with the coot or moorhen: though of course he is mistaken about the feet differing from one another.] has this peculiarity apart from other birds, that it has a webbed foot for swimming, and a cloven foot for walking: for it swims like a duck in the water, and walks like a partridge on land: it drinks only when it bites, since it dips all its food in water: it is a figure of a man who will not take advice, and ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas |
