"Amphibious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the alligators, ganoid fishes, sea-cows, and tall gray herons, the ichthyosaurus, holoptychius, dinotherium, and brontozoum of ancient days. Here and there the river is bordered with low alluvial deposits covered with feathery-topped arrow-grass and amphibious vegetation; but generally the banks are about ten feet high and magnificently wooded; they are abrupt, and ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... is an amphibious animal, and spends full half of his time in the water, he cannot remain long, without coming to the surface to take breath; and already the heads of several were seen at different points in the lake. Others, again, had boldly climbed out on the ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... exhibited themselves in all degrees of ugliness and deformity. Of course Madame de Villegry did not bathe, being, as she said, too nervous. She was sitting under a large parasol and enjoying her own superiority over those wretched, amphibious creatures who waddled on the sands before her, comparing Madame X to a seal and Mademoiselle Z to the skeleton ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... knowledge of law enabled the pastor to be the worldly as well as the spiritual counsellor of his people. A striking case in point is that of the venerable Parson Eaton, who resided in a lonely seafaring district on the coast of Maine, and preached to a congregation who lived the amphibious life of farmers and fishermen. The town of Harpswell, where ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... any other man, doubtless this would have been so. But he was as nearly amphibious as a human being can be, and could dive and swim and hold his breath, yes, and see beneath the surface as well as the animal from which he took his name. Never did such gifts stand their owner in better stead than during the minutes of ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... Plomacy declared his apprehension that the Honourable Johns and Honourable Georges would come in a sort of amphibious costume, half-morning, half-evening, satin neck-handkerchiefs, frock-coats, primrose gloves, and polished boots; and that, being so dressed, they would decline riding at the quintain, or taking part in any of the athletic games which Miss Thorne had prepared with so much fond care. If the Lord ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... are intended. In Mexico, on the march to Orizaba, it had the mortification to trudge along on foot, while midshipmen commanded sections of a light battery, marines were cannoneers, and sailors rode the horses, using, in their amphibious state, the oddest medley of sea-terms and military jargon that ever grated on professional ears. It would have been equally proper to put an artillery captain in command of the frigate Cumberland then lying in the harbor of Vera Cruz, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... we saw it the next morning, was a good-sized waterside farmhouse, wide-spreading and low-roofed. The place had a sort of amphibious appearance, as if depending for its maintenance equally upon the land and the water. The house stood a little distance back from the narrow beach, and in its front yard a net was hung to dry and to be mended; a small boat, in course of repair, ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... and the Araners required assistance every other year. They were not unwilling to catch fish, but they had nothing to catch them with; and, strange as it may seem, these islanders, who could scarcely move five yards in any direction without falling into the sea, these amphibious Irishmen, did not know the art of catching fish! They tinkered and slopped around the shoals in the vicinity of the island, but they were never able to catch enough fish to keep themselves from starvation, much less to supply the Dublin and London markets. Their boats were the most primitive ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... a great power was largely due to the unsuccessful attempt to coerce the Dutch people. Out of the struggle arose the Republic of the United Provinces, and Holland, won from the sea, and almost an amphibious state, became in a few years a great naval power. A hardy race of sailors was trained in the fisheries of the North Sea. Settlements were established in the Far East, and fleets of Dutch East Indiamen broke the Spanish monopoly of Asiatic trade. ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... and there's a gentleman at the hotel would accommodate us. They're inside." She rose, and moved toward the door, waving him to follow. Her slow, clumsy body and chinless, full-lidded head reminded him of a turtle; she gave a still deeper amphibious impression—there was something markedly cold-blooded, inhuman, deleted, in her incongruous, gaudy bulk—an impression of a low, primitive organism, the subtle smell ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Sleight-of-hand to him is just as innate as hitting any shaped ball with any shaped stick, is to a man with an eye for games. The artists who drew these illustrations, draw anything instinctively. Years of practice will never make the faces of a pretty girl that I draw look less like an amphibious cow. But I have frequently given performances of two hour's duration without any previous practice whatever, beyond a quick rehearsal to see that all the various properties are in their correct places, ready at ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... Mr. McCarthy's art) has specially formed and endowed him for the amphibious sport indicated above, and has provided him with an excellent nose, an almost waterproof coat, the sporting instincts of a true son of Erin, and, above all, a disposition full of good sense; he is high-couraged, and at the same time adaptable ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... composed of the remains of animals which formerly inhabited the ocean. On the other hand, the animal remains of the beds accompanying the coal are typically the remains of air-breathing, terrestrial, amphibious, or aerial animals, together with those which inhabit fresh or brackish waters. Marine fossils may be found in the Coal-measures, but they are invariably confined to special horizons in the strata, ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... land in Bulgaria, they might cut off the Turks from Europe at once, accumulate at their leisure a sufficient force, and push down methodically from a proper base to the Chatalja line, fighting like men instead of amphibious ducks. The thing looks easy, and the twisted hills and hidden batteries of Gal-lipoli Peninsula were so heart-breaking a maze to fling good men into that you can well imagine the Allies used what pressure they could. But if it was important to them that the gate be opened—let ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... "Amphibious!" exclaimed Roswell Gardiner, in an aside to Mary, as the stranger entered the room, following Baiting Joe's lead. The last only came for his glass of rum-and-water, served with which by the aid of the negro, he passed the back of his hand across his mouth, napkin-fashion, nodded his ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... gravely to the middie, as we tucked the insensible Spring Chicken into his berth—"If you want to gamble, you'll do it—so I don't advise you. But these amphibious beasts are dangerous; so in future play with gentlemen ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... education. Though Bessie attended school while in the city, yet she was absent four months in the year, during three of which she studied with her governess, on the sea-shore. Fortunately for Bessie, Mrs. McGilvery was an amphibious lady, and was always ready for a trip in The Starry Flag, Levi Fairfield's well-tried craft. She had a taste for yachts, not only in pleasant weather, and on a smooth sea, but when the wind blew anything short of a gale, and the white caps whipped over the gunwale of the boat. Bessie, therefore, ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... Bostonian," said the doctor, laughing at my delight. "It is said that a marked feature of our modern civilization is that we are tending to revert to the amphibious type of our remote ancestry; evidently you will not object to drifting with ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... twelve or thirteen," he said, slowly, as one who grudges assent, "in my uncle's time, I liked it well enough, no doubt. Boys don't realize the full terror of sea or cliff, you know, and are perfectly happy swimming and climbing. I used to be amphibious in those days, like a seal or an otter—in the water half my time; and I scrambled over the rocks—great heavens, it makes me giddy now just to THINK where I scrambled. But when I was about thirteen years old"—his face grew graver still—"a ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... put up at a hotel that was built like something between a roof-garden and a sectional bookcase. It began to rain the day we got there. As the saying is, Juniper Aquarius was sure turning on the water plugs on Mount Amphibious. ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... thrust. It will be understood, then, that this big movable trunk, the head of which, when it is at rest, is thrust up into the box on the roof, is made to slant down in an oblique direction from the building to the river; for the elevator is an amphibious institution, and flourishes only on the banks of navigable waters. When its head is ensconced within its box, and the beast of prey is thus nearly hidden within the building, the unsuspicious vessel is brought ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... isle of Salabat we went to another, where I furnished myself with cloves, cinnamon, and other spices. As we sailed from this island we saw a tortoise twenty cubits in length and breadth. We observed also an amphibious animal like a cow, which gave milk; its skin is so hard that they usually make bucklers of it. I saw another, which had the shape and ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... couple of immense dogs, male and female, half Newfoundland, half mastiff, which were celebrated for their sagacity, courage, and high-training. They were, in the most comprehensive sense, amphibious, and their home being near the sea, they spent many hours daily in ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... source of superiority was, after all, in the men themselves. The English sailor was then, as now, a quite amphibious and all-cunning animal, capable of turning his hand to everything, from needlework and carpentry to gunnery or hand-to-hand blows; and he was, moreover, one of a nation, every citizen of which was not merely permitted ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Airports: none; lagoon landings by amphibious aircraft from Western Samoa Telecommunications: telephone service between ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... more secluded wharves appear wholly deserted by men and women, and are tenanted alone by rats and boys,—two amphibious races; either can swim anywhere, or scramble and penetrate everywhere. The boys launch some abandoned skiff, and, with an oar for a sail and another for a rudder, pass from wharf to wharf; nor would it be surprising if the bright-eyed rats were to take similar passage on ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... into the water she became a sheldrake duck." The Passamaquoddies, who relate this story, have hardly yet passed out of the stage of thought in which no steadfast boundary is set between men and the lower animals. The amphibious maiden, who dwelt in the bottom of the river, could not be drowned by jumping into the stream; and it is evident that she only resumes her true aquatic form in escaping from her husband, who, it should be added, is himself called Partridge and seems to be regarded as, in fact, a fowl ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... Donelson, where he had initiated an amphibious campaign of highly original daring, he was not on the battlefield when his army was suddenly attacked. He arrived to find his right wing crushed and his whole force on the verge of defeat. He blamed no one. Without more than a passing ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... and where, thanks to a friendliest hospitality, he was to hang ecstatic, through another sublime afternoon, on the wave of a magical wand. Here, as happened, were charming wise, original people even down to delightful amphibious American children, enamelled by the sun of the Bay as for figures of miniature Tritons and Nereids on a Renaissance plaque; and above all, on the part of the general prospect, a demonstration of the grand style of composition and effect that one was never ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... his will and better judgment. In May he had taken command of the assembling militiamen at Dayton in Ohio. In June he had been joined by a battalion of inexperienced regulars. And now, in July, he was already feeling the ill effects of having to carry on what should have been an amphibious campaign without the assistance of any proper force afloat; for on the 2nd ten days before he issued his proclamation at Sandwich, Lieutenant Rolette, an enterprising French-Canadian officer in the Provincial ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... the inns! Amphibious wretches, the population. Ashore (from steam-packet) at four in the morning. Fires out at The Ship. No beds! Think of it! Had to wait till a party got up—going off at six. Six came—changed their minds (lazy!) wouldn't go! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... alarm 'A man overboard!' (on the gravel), but he was immediately recovered, none the worse. Presently, I observed the Skipper overboard, but forbore to mention it, as he seemed in no wise disconcerted by the accident. Indeed, I soon came to regard the Skipper as an amphibious creature, for he was so perpetually plunging overboard to look up at the hands aloft, that he was oftener in the bosom of the ocean than on deck. His pride in his crew on those occasions was delightful, and the conventional unintelligibility ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... golf are good crops in their way, but they don't feed the belly of man. As matters stand the only people that have fit things to eat now in all Europe are the American troops in France, and their food comes out of tins chiefly. Ach! Heaven! In these islands man is amphibious and carnivorous. It rains every day and meat, meat, meat is the only human idea of food. God bless us, one acre of the Sandhills is worth a vast estate of tin mines and golf links ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... late excursion I almost became an amphibious being—spending the most of my days in the water, and by night pitching my tent on the barren sands. Whilst I remained at Spring Garden, the alligators were yet in full life; the white-headed eagles setting; the smaller resident birds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... possession. One shape they put on, is that of an animal human above the waist, yet terminating below in the tail and fins of a fish, but the most favourite form is that of the larger seal or Haaf-fish; for, in possessing an amphibious nature, they are enabled not only to exist in the ocean, but to land on some rock, where they frequently lighten themselves of their sea-dress, resume their proper shape, and with much curiosity examine the nature of the upper world belonging to the human ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... and humanize their laws. From that time nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions. And when the sun set, this being, Oannes, retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep, for he was amphibious. After this there appeared other animals ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... said Swinton, "and it is very good eating. It is a large lizard of the iguana species, which is found about these rivers; it is amphibious, but perfectly harmless, subsisting upon vegetables and insects. I tell you it is a great delicacy, ugly as it looks. It is quite dead, so let us drag it out of the water, and send it up to Mahomed ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... fond of the water, and delights in floundering about in the mud. It can swim and dive also admirably, and will often remain underneath the surface for many minutes together, and then rising for a fresh supply of air, plunge down again. It indeed appears to be almost as amphibious as the hippopotamus, and has consequently ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... pondweed; they are almost transparent, and look when dry something like gold-beater's skin. I see also the cylindrical tufts of the horn-wort with its bristle-like leaves often several times forked. It grows entirely under the water. See also a few rose-coloured spikes of the amphibious persicaria. ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... and Birkin leaned to help him in to the boat. Gudrun again watched Gerald climb out of the water, but this time slowly, heavily, with the blind clambering motions of an amphibious beast, clumsy. Again the moon shone with faint luminosity on his white wet figure, on the stooping back and the rounded loins. But it looked defeated now, his body, it clambered and fell with slow clumsiness. He was breathing hoarsely too, like ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... then paddled themselves across a mile and a half of rough water, shook out their creases and touched up their hair on arrival, danced all the evening, and then paddled themselves home, whatever the weather. Most Bermudian girls, indeed, seem quite amphibious. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... which may attach to immediate availability, with a naval force, in addition to its own air strength, of a proper complement of land forces (with appropriate air strength) which are organized, equipped, and trained for amphibious operations. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... your brother Benjamin is landed? And my brother Foresight's daughter is come out of the country: I assure you, there's a match talked of by the old people. Well, if he be but as great a sea-beast as she is a land-monster, we shall have a most amphibious breed. The progeny will be all otters. He has been bred at sea, and she has never been out of ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... considerable, with its handsome square church tower and its huge red tide-mill, now silent and weather-worn, standing mournfully at the head of the dry harbour of Pagham, whose waters once turned its wheels. On the west, on the shores of the Bosham estuary, or Chichester Harbour, are the sleepy amphibious villages of Appledram, famous once for its salt and its smugglers, Birdham, and Earnley. Let no one be tempted to take a direct line across the fields from Selsey to Earnley, for dykes and canals must effectually stop him. Indeed, cross country walking in this part of ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... American Amerikano. Amiability amindeco. Amiable afabla, aminda. Amicably pace. Amid meze. Amidst meze. Amity amikeco. Ammonia amoniako. Among inter. Amongst inter. Amorous amema. Amount sumo. Amphibious amfibia. Amphitheatre amfiteatro. Amphora amforo. Ample suficxa. Amplify grandigi. Amplitude amplekso. Amputate detrancxi. Amulet talismano. Amuse amuzi. Anagram anagramo. Analogy ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... escape as fast as we could, for the enemy was gaining on us, and it would be madness to await his attack. I was steering, and I exerted myself to the utmost to get away from the danger and to escape to the shore. But the amphibious beast was approaching so fast that he could almost seize us, when Lindsay, running all risks, fired his gun ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... water—at least, during the summer season—and as there was good fishing-ground in the neighbourhood, without a human being to disturb or molest them, it had become a very favourite residence of these amphibious animals, the writer having occasionally counted from fifty to sixty playing about the rock at a time. But when they came to be disturbed every tide, and their seclusion was broken in upon by the kindling of great fires, together with the beating of hammers and picks during ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and sentimental either. It is all right for a giraffe to be sentimental, but not a hippopotamus. If you doubt me consult any set of natural history pictures. The giraffe is shown with his long and sinuous neck entwined in fond embrace about the neck of his mate; but the amphibious, blood-sweating hippo is depicted as spouting and wallowing, morose and misanthropic, in a mud puddle off by himself. In passing I may say that I regard this comparison as a particularly apt one, because I know of no living creature so truly amphibious in hot weather as an open-pored ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... porpouses, and then dive again into the lower regions. They are neither seamen nor landsmen, good whips nor decent shots, their hair is not woolly enough for niggers, and their faces are too black for white men. They ain't amphibious animals, like marines and otters. They are Salamanders. But that's a long word, and now they call ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... hippopotamus had not quite completed its lazy yawn, when the entire winged host rose with a rushing noise so thunderous, yet so soft and peculiar, that words cannot convey the idea of the sight and sound. At the same time, many grunts and snorts and heavy plunges told that sundry amphibious creatures had been disturbed, and were seeking safety in ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... of winter, or when dried up in the summer sun; but even then a thaw or rain made them all but impassable. The rains of autumn and the thaws of spring converted them into a mass of liquid mud, such as amphibious animals might delight to revel in. Except an occasional legislative grant of a few thousand pounds for the whole Province, which was ill- expended, and often not accounted for at all, the great leading roads, as well as all other roads, depended, in Upper ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... impounded, they conclude that they have a full right of making them pay at their own discretion for their deliverance: to say the truth, whether it be that men who live on the sea-shore are of an amphibious kind, and do not entirely partake of human nature, or whatever else may be the reason, they are so far from taking any share in the distresses of mankind, or of being moved with any compassion for them, that they look upon them as blessings showered down ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... policymakers. Detailed coordinated information was needed not only on such major powers as Germany and Japan, but also on places of little previous interest. In the Pacific Theater, for example, the Navy and Marines had to launch amphibious operations against many islands about which information was unconfirmed or nonexistent. Intelligence authorities resolved that the United States should never ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... contributes to the comforts of life. Since that time nothing excellent has been invented. At sunset this monster Oannes plunged back into the sea, and remained all night beneath the waves, for he was amphibious. He wrote a book on the origin of things and of civilization, which he gave to men." These are a few of the fables which were current among the races of the Lower Euphrates with regard to the first beginnings of the universe. That they possessed many other ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... treatise on the subject; the Irish boy said to feed on grass and hay, found living among the wild sheep; the girl found living wild in Holland in 1717; the two goat-like boys of the Pyrenees (in 1719); the amphibious wild girl of Chalons sur Marne (in 1731); the wild boy of Bamberg, who lowed like an ox; and, the most renowned of all, Kaspar Hauser. This celebrated "wild boy" has recently been made the subject of a monograph by the Duchess of Cleveland (208), ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... curling, expressive toes, that he lost his balance and rolled over into the water; from which he was promptly rescued by a human ladder, dexterously let down to him in sections, without a moment's hesitation, by his allies, who, like all Venetian boys of the populace, were amphibious animals, full of pranks. ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Federal frigates, still more the sinister black hulls of the new steam men-of-war, meant that the South was fast becoming a land besieged, with every outwork accessible by water exposed to sudden attack and almost certain capture by any good amphibious force of soldiers ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... wooden huts at Sandling Junction, to make room for newly recruited units. The dwellings were but half-finished, the drains were open ditches, and the rains descended and the floods came as usual. We lived an amphibious and wretched existence until January, when, to our great joy, we were transferred to billets in the Metropole, one of Folkestone's most fashionable hotels. To be sure, we slept on bare floors, but the roof was rainproof, which was the essential thing. The aesthetically inclined could ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... others a soaring eagle, emblematical, no doubt, of the valiant and high-flying qualities of the inhabitants, so after mature deliberation a sleek beaver was emblazoned on the city standard as indicative of the amphibious origin and patient and persevering ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... having obtained the name from this passage. (See Bartsch, "Germanistische Studien", ii, 129.) (3) "Wont to wear". In the Middle Ages costly furs and fish-skins were used as linings and covered, as here described, with silk or cloth. By fish such amphibious animals as otter and beaver were often meant. (4) "Well fit". In this passage "wert", the reading of A and D, has been followed, instead of unwert of B and C, as it seems more appropriate to the sense. (5) "Dight", 'arrayed'; ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... substantive, having no vocative, construed like a substantive, and governing the case of its verb."—Grant's Lat. Gram., p. 70. In the Latin gerund thus defined, there is an appearance of ancient classical authority for that "amphibious species" of words of which so much notice has already been taken. Our participle in ing, when governed by a preposition, undoubtedly corresponds very nearly, both in sense and construction, to this Latin gerund; the principal difference being, that the one is declined, like a noun, and the other ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... had volunteered for the perilous enterprise. A sudden sickness prevented him, and his place was taken by a venturesome New London sergeant named Abijah Shipman, or, as rechristened by his companions, "Long Bige." He was an amphibious chap, half sailor, half soldier, long, thin, and bony, and not wanting in Yankee humor. He had courage enough to undertake any enterprise, if he could only be primed with rum and tobacco, articles which he deemed ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... submarine and naval attacks, and amphibious thrusts, and ever-mounting air attack, we have deprived the Japs of the power to check the momentum of our ever-growing and ever-advancing military forces. We have reduced the Japs' shipping by more than three million tons. We have overcome their ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... enthusiasm in obtaining a charter is not difficult to understand. That amphibious colony, consisting of mainland, islands, and a large body of water, was inhabited by "poor despised peasants," as Governor Brenton described them, "living remote in the woods" and subject to the "envious ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... pebbles, there it will glide. A birch thirty feet long, big enough for a trio and their traps, weighs only seventy-five pounds. When the rapid passes into a cataract, when the wall of rock across the stream is impregnable in front, it can be taken in the flank by an amphibious birch. The navigator lifts his canoe out of water, and bonnets himself with it. He wears it on head and shoulders, around the impassable spot. Below the rough water, he gets into his elongated chapeau and floats away. Without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... in the morning. Accompanied by Ulupi he came back from the palace of Kauravya to the region where the Ganges entereth the plains. The chaste Ulupi, taking her leave there, returned to her own abode. And, O Bharata, she granted unto Arjuna a boon making him invincible in water, saying, 'Every amphibious creature shall, without ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... by a swarm of beggars and harpies, with strange figures and stranger tones: some craving his charity, some snatching away his luggage, and at the same time bidding him 'never trouble himself,' and 'never fear.' A scramble in the boat and on shore for bags and parcels began, and an amphibious fight betwixt men, who had one foot on sea and one on land, was seen; and long and loud the battle of trunks and portmanteaus raged! The vanquished departed, clinching their empty hands at their opponents, and swearing ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... the land, we observe similar grass-like leaves, but with little yellow stellated flowers: these belong to the order of Schollera graminea. Other larger leaves belong to the Amphibious Polygony, and different species of the Potamogeton, the ears of whose blossoms rise curiously above the surface of the water. Clearing our way through a row of tall swamp weeds, Zizania aquatica, Scirpus lacustris, Scirpus pungens, among which the white flowers of Sparganium ramosum and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... almost amphibious. They bathed themselves as often as seven times per diem; and young people of style passed a portion of the day, and often a part of the night, in the warm baths. Hence the importance which these establishments assumed in ancient times. There were ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... one of these slow-moving canal barges appeared to me to possess many charms. The barge people seem to pass a sort of amphibious existence, belonging neither to the land nor to the water, but having a human interest in each. The women and children almost wholly live aboard their floating homes, often never stepping ashore from one day to the other and going about their domestic duties, as well as those connected with their ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes
... than doubtful whether Lamarck knew of them. He observed that fossils appear first in "transition" or palaeozoic strata, and were mainly corals and molluscs; that in the older carboniferous rocks the fossils are of higher types, such as fish and amphibious animals; while in the tertiary or alluvial strata occur the remains of birds and quadrupeds. He thought that marine plants were more ancient than land plants. His studies led him to infer that the fossils contained in the oldest rocks are very ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... of the water?' is a question very frequently asked, in hot summer weather, by amphibious-looking young men. 'Very,' is the general reply. 'An't you?'—'Hardly ever off it,' is the response, accompanied by sundry adjectives, expressive of the speaker's heartfelt admiration of that element. Now, with all respect for the opinion of society in general, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... feet in length, and two feet or more in breadth at its huge middle. It was queerly but not brilliantly spotted, and its head was very nearly that of the anaconda of to-day. Already the sea-serpent had become amphibious. It had already acquired the knowledge it has transmitted to the anaconda, that it might leave the stream, and, from some vantage point upon the shore, find more surely a victim than in the waters of the sea or river. This monster serpent was but waiting for the advent of any land ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... of the fair sex (I believe the only one) who appear to much advantage upon the briny wave; but the nature of our commander's lady not happening to be amphibious, she gave such unequivocal proofs of being out of her proper element, that my wishes for shore increased upon ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... sunset, and scattered for short excursions in their canoes along the neighboring coves of the lake, for the various purposes of fishing, shooting ducks, or inspecting the shores for indications of beaver, otter, and other classes of the smaller fur-animals of amphibious habits. All returning, however, at sunset, they proceeded to cook and eat their suppers, much in the same manner as on the preceding evening; after which, in compliance with the suggestions made by several ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... encumbered with a weight, without a weapon, or even an arm free to wield one, it would now have for its antagonist a strong man,—fresh and vigorous,—armed with a long-bladed knife; one, moreover, who from earliest youth had lived a half-amphibious life, and who was almost as much at home in the water as the shark itself. At all events, the Coromantee could calculate on keeping himself above water for several hours without rest, and under it as long as any other animal whose natural ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... seeking Cartier's birthplace rather than Chateaubriand's tomb. It were far fitter that Cartier instead of Chateaubriand should have been buried out on the "Plage" beyond the ramparts, exiled for a part of every day by the sea, for the amphibious life of this master pilot, going in and out of the harbor with the tide, had added to France a thousand miles of coast and river, had opened the door of the new world, beyond the banks of the Baccalaos, to the imaginations of Europe, and unwittingly showed the way not to Asia, but ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... sufficiently familiar. Professor Haeckel does not seem to be aware of Buffon's work, and quotes Goethe as making an original discovery when he writes, in the year 1796:—"Thus much then we have gained, that we may assert without hesitation that all the more perfect organic natures, such as fishes, amphibious animals, birds, mammals, and man at the head of the last, were all formed upon one original type, which only varies more or less in parts which were none the less permanent, and still daily changes and modifies its form ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... the rudder with their hands. The cold was cruel; the fatigue, as time went on, became excessive; and in that preserve of sharks, fear hunted them. Again and again, Francois, the half-breed, would have desisted and gone down; but the woman, whole blood of an amphibious race, still supported him with cheerful words. I am reminded of a woman of Hawaii who swam with her husband, I dare not say how many miles, in a high sea, and came ashore at last with his dead body in her arms. It was about five in ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in amphibious joy among the tepid waves he seemed to cast off that sense of unease which had pursued him of late. It was good to inhale the harsh salty savour—to submit himself to these calming voices—to float, like a careless Leviathan, in the blue immensity; ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... governor. These were commanded by the valiant Stoffel Brinkerhoof, who whilom had acquired such immortal fame at Oyster Bay; they displayed as a standard a beaver rampant on a field of orange, being the arms of the province, and denoting the persevering industry and the amphibious origin ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Knight of the Shire is to be conferred, he cannot be pronounced a fit person to receive it. For whether, my Brother Freeholders, you look at the humbleness of his situation amongst Country Gentlemen; or at his amphibious habits, in the two elements of Law and Authorship, and the odd vagaries he has played in both; or whether he be tried by the daring opinions which, by his own acknowledgment, he has maintained in Parliament, and at public meetings, on the subject of the elective ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the landsman who enjoyed nominal exemption and the seaman who enjoyed none, there existed a middle or amphibious class of persons who lived exclusively on neither land nor water, but habitually used both in the pursuit of their various callings. These were the wherry or watermen, the lightermen, bargemen, keelmen, trowmen and canal-boat ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... so from shore, my boat would startle a great amphibious ox standing in the water up to his middle, calmly eating the succulent water grass. To secure it he had to plunge his head and neck ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... decomposition, floating on the surface of the water a day or two afterwards, and can easily be secured by the sportsman, if he be vigilant enough to take them before the hungry watchful savages come and secure them, to appease their rapacious appetites. Mussulmans will even eat these amphibious creatures without cutting their throats, looking on them as cold-blooded animals, created in ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... real estate as anything. It's kind of amphibious; half real estate certainly,—more'n half when ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... board ready to start for rail-head with twenty-four hours' supplies. Beyond the maze of "points" is moored the strangest of all rolling-stock, the grey-coated armoured-train, within whose iron walls are domesticated two amphibious petty ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... round and round, or sit on the benches, or lie in the grass by the brink, and smoke cigarettes without end, and watch the old amphibious life I found so charming half a century ago, and find it ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... at our dinner near the landing-place we watched a strange species of fish (genus Chironectes, Cuvier). These little animals are provided with arms, at least with members shaped like such as far as the elbow, but the lower part resembles a fin; they are amphibious, living equally well on the mud or in the water; in moving in the mud they walk, as it were, on their elbows, and the lower arm or fin then projects like a great splay foot; but in swimming the whole of this apparatus is used as a fin. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... their late dominion, and cover it almost entirely; the water, again, cloudy and yellow, like pea-soup, seems but a solution of such islands, rolling turbid and thick with alluvium, which it both gathers and deposits as it sweeps along with a swollen, smooth rapidity, that almost deceives the eye. Amphibious creatures, alligators, serpents, and wild fowl, haunt these yet but half-formed regions, where land and water are of the consistency of hasty-pudding—the one seeming too unstable to walk on, the other almost too thick to float in. But then, the sky, if no human ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... could not but reflect that my forlorn situation was yet attended with some advantages. Of the whole island, though small, I had peaceable possession. No one, it was probable, would ever appear to dispute my claim, unless it were the amphibious animals of the ocean. Since the island was almost inaccessible, at night my repose was not disturbed by continual apprehension of the approach of cannibals or of beasts of prey. Again and again I thanked God on my knees for these various ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Said to the winds that touched their leafy keys; Who saw so keenly and so well could paint The village-folk, with all their humors quaint,— The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan, Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown,— The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown,— The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale, And the loud straggler levying his black mail,— Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, All that lies buried under fifty years. To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay, And, grateful, own ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... bathing several times with Minty Foster, but had never ventured beyond her depth. There was a flight of steps leading down to the water at the left of Edna's cottage to a little natural harbor behind the rock masses. No sandy beach was there. One dropped into sea green depths where only the amphibious could feel at home; but Edna was amphibious, and even Miss Lacey's shade hat, firmly tied beneath the chin, was sometimes seen to ride upon the wave as its owner indulged in a stately swim from one point of rock to another. Her mouth and nose on these occasions were lifted ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... the fish, which there is good reason to believe is a survival of an ancient structure used for quite a different purpose. It was originally developed, in the opinion of the writer,[1] as an air-breathing organ, in a very ancient semi-amphibious class of fishes, from which the existing bony fishes have descended. When the latter resumed the gill-breathing habit, this organ lost its original function, and its subsequent history is a curious and significant one. In some modern fishes it has quite disappeared. In others it exists as a minute ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... and ditches, favoured by a round horizon moon on his left. So for a couple of hours he went ahead over rolling fallow land to the meadow-flats and a pale shining of freshets; then hit on a lane skirting the water, and reached an amphibious village; five miles from Storling, he was informed, and a clear traverse of lanes, not to be mistaken, 'if he kept a sharp eye open.' The sharpness of his eyes was divided between the sword-belt of the starry Hunter and the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had passed, and found ourselves in an extensive gulf, which narrowed as it entered the land, and resembled the mouth of a river. We did not hesitate to follow its course. We went round the bay, but found no traces of man, but numerous herds of the amphibious animal, called sometimes the sea-lion, the sea-dog, or the sea-elephant, or trunked phoca: modern voyagers give it the last name. These animals, though of enormous size, are gentle and peaceful, unless roused by the cruelty of man. They were in such numbers on ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... poets sacrificed the passion and passionate flow of poetry to the subtleties of intellect and to the stars of wit; the moderns to the glare and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and heterogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious something, made up, half of image, and half of abstract [5] meaning. The one sacrificed the heart to the head; the other both heart and head to ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... this amphibious, ill-born mob began, That vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman. The customs, sirnames, languages, and manners, Of all these nations, are their own explainers; Whose relics are so lasting and so strong, They've left a ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... schools, and the relief of the national poor. He mingles in the narrative, therefore, a well deserved feeling of execration against the tyrant who employed the torture, which a tone of ridicule towards the patient, as if, after all, it had not been ill bestowed on such an equivocal and amphibious character as a titular abbot. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... of engravings contain descriptions and emblems of the departure of the soul from this world, and of its passage into the next. There are various symbols of this mysterious transition: one is a snake with a boy riding upon its back, its amphibious nature plainly typifying the twofold existence allotted to man. The soul is also often shown muffled in a veil and travelling garb, seated upon a horse, and followed by a slave carrying a large sack of provisions, an emblem of the long and dreary journey about ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... aware that the inhabitants of the islands of Lake Tchad, like many other negro tribes, plunge with impunity into sheets of water infested with crocodiles and caymans, and without troubling their heads about them. The amphibious denizens of this lake enjoy the well-deserved reputation of being ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... that our first task was to lessen the concentrated pressure on the Russian front by compelling Germany to divert part of her manpower and equipment to another theater of war. After months of secret planning and preparation in the utmost detail, an enormous amphibious expedition was embarked for French North Africa from the United States and the United Kingdom in literally hundreds of ships. It reached its objectives with very small losses, and has already produced an important effect upon the whole ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sprung partly from the old Epicurean, and partly from the Peripatetic Sect; they were brought first into Britain by Julius Cesar; and finding it a Land of Plenty, they wisely resolv'd never to go Home again. Their Doctrines are Amphibious, and compos'd Party per Pale of the two Sects before-mention'd; from the Peripatetics, they derive their Principle of Walking, as a proper Method to digest a Meal, or create an Appetite; from ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... said Mr. Martell, "but after the heroic efforts of your amphibious coachman last night, I should feel guilty if we broke in upon his ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... life for beginning work, and will continue at hard labour, when well pastured and bathed, for another six years. At 12 years of age a carefully worked buffalo will still serve for light labour for about five years. It is an amphibious animal, and if left to itself it would pass quite one-third of its life in water or mud, whilst it is indispensable to allow it to bathe every day. When grazing near flooded land it will roam into the water up to its neck and immerse its head for two minutes at a time, searching for vegetable ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... no quadruped not absolutely amphibious that is so thoroughly at home in the water as the elephant. In a wild state it will swim the largest rivers, and it delights in morasses, where it rolls in the deep mud like a pig or buffalo, and thus coats its hide with a covering of slime, which protects it from the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... what to make of the pianets; but the footsteps of beasts reaching to the edge of the water may probably refer to amphibious animals, while the flocks of pianets may have been water-fowl ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... element than the land is," thought the lad. "The brute's amphibious, and I don't believe it will turn upon me unless I stick my dirk into it; and I don't care, I'll risk it, if I die for it. I don't believe they're so tough ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I had done so busy a place injustice.' In this opinion his readers who know Yarmouth will agree. Brighton and Hastings and Eastbourne might envy Yarmouth its sandy beach, where you can lead an amphibious life, watching the fishing-smacks as they come to shore with cargoes often so heavy as to be sold for manure; watching the merchant-ships and yachts that lie securely in the Roads, or the long trail of black ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie |
