"Carnivora" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the usual order of Nature. But this is perhaps because the minute, almost invisible creatures, or entomostraca, of which the rivers and ponds are full, and which are the main food of the smaller water carnivora, live mainly on decaying vegetable substance, which is practically converted and condensed into microscopical animals before these become in turn the food of others. It is as if all trees and grass on land were first eaten by locusts or white ants, and the locusts and white ants were then eaten ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... therefore, with the animals belonging to the ruminantia— the eighth in natural order; taking next the carnivora—the fifth; and the smaller rodentia—the sixth; while the birds and reptiles will follow in due course. Among these, however, we shall select only the most notable and curious; for although North America does not teem with animal ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... standing between the deer and the dogs with a heavy whip. What the result would have been had the dogs reached the deer it is hard to say. I had kept my stand on the step behind the sled and managed to check its wild career with the brake and to throw it over and stop the approach before the carnivora reached their immemorial prey. Herein lies one of the difficulties of the domestication of reindeer in Alaska, a country where so far dogs have been the only domestic animals. Again, as we entered the outskirts of Nome the incident was repeated, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... all play, including much of that of man, takes the form of mock battle, and is to that extent an education for the future. Among the carnivora it takes also the form of the chase. Its spring and motive are, of course, pleasure, and not education; and herein again is revealed the cunning of nature—the power that conceals purposes of its own in our most thoughtless acts. The cat and the ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... birds feed their young from the soft contents of the crop, and in pigeons, at the breeding season, the cells lining the crop proliferate rapidly and are discharged as a soft cheesy mass into the cavity, forming the substance known as pigeon's milk. Amongst Mammalia, in Rodentia, Carnivora, elephants and ruminants, the wall of the oesophagus contains a layer of voluntary muscle, by the contraction of which these animals induce anti- peristaltic movements and can so regurgitate food into ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... gone far afield among the wild beasts of the earth, and had brought together attributes and weapons that nature never combines in a single animal, such as the claws of the scorpion, the wings and talons of the eagle, the coils of the serpent, the mane and muzzle of the great carnivora. The conception which governs all this is similar to that of which we see the expression in those Theban tombs where the dead man prosecutes his voyage along the streams of Ament, and runs the gauntlet of the grimacing demons who would seize ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... covered the whole northern hemisphere. No one before had drawn such vast conclusions from the local phenomena of the Alpine valleys. "The surface of Europe," says Agassiz, "adorned before by a tropical vegetation and inhabited by troops of large elephants, enormous hippopotami, and gigantic carnivora, was suddenly buried under a vast mantle of ice, covering alike plains, lakes, seas and plateaus. Upon the life and movement of a powerful creation fell the silence of death. Springs paused, rivers ceased to flow, the rays ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... with the common cat and the group of carnivora or flesh-eating animals to which it belongs. As we pass along the streets of the city, we will see many cats which differ in some details, though they resemble one another closely. While they vary somewhat ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... (Cynaelurus jubatus, formerly known as Gueparda jubata), a member of the family Felidae, distinguished by its claws being only partially retractile (see CARNIVORA). The cheeta attains a length of 3 to 4 ft.; it is of a pale fulvous colour, marked with numerous spots of black on the upper surface and sides, and is nearly white beneath. The fur is somewhat crisp, altogether ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... is still to be found all over the country, except where the population is thickest; and as the leopard haunts rocky places, it is, though much hunted for the sake of its beautiful skin, less likely to be exterminated. Some of the smaller carnivora, especially the pretty lynxes, have now become very rare. There is a good supply of hyenas, but they ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... or sand. The tracks were too large to be mistaken for those either of a leopard or panther, and the only other animal to which they could appertain was the lion. There were lions in that district. But Ossaroo well knew how to distinguish between the tracks of the two great carnivora, and without a moment's hesitation he pronounced the robber to ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... ses cruels amants." By an odd chance, I once saw a real scene contrasting remarkably with Saint-Pierre's sentimental melodrama. It was in the Clifton Zoological Gardens, which, as possibly some readers may know, were at one time regarded as particularly home-like by the larger carnivora. It was a very fine day, and an equally fine young tigress was endeavouring to attract the attention of her cruel lover. She rolled delicately about, like a very large, very pretty, and exceptionally ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... one of the peculiarities of life within Pellucidar that man is more often the hunted than the hunter. Myriad are the huge-bellied carnivora of this primitive world. Never, from birth to death, are those great bellies sufficiently filled, so always are their mighty owners prowling about in ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
