"Natural history" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... BLOOD. By P. FLOURENS, Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, (Institute of France); Member of the Royal Societies and Academies of Science of London, Edinburgh, Stockholm, Munich, Madrid, Brussels, etc., etc., and Professor at the Museum of Natural History of Paris. Translated from the French by J. C. ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever." It is a maxim of the English constitution, that "the king never dies;" and the same may with nearly equal propriety be observed of every private man, especially if he have children. "Death," say the writers of natural history, "is the generator of life:" and what is thus true of animal corruption, may with small variation be affirmed of human mortality. I turn off my footman, and hire another; and he puts on the livery of his predecessor: he thinks himself somebody; but he is only ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... shamelessness often obstructed the inventive sallies of the casuist. With more intolerance than even Ozanam, he resolutely denied all that pertained to his clan, proclaimed the most disconcerting axioms, maintained with a disconcerting authority that "geology is returning toward Moses," and that natural history, like chemistry and every contemporary science, verifies the scientific truth of the Bible. The proposition on each page was of the unique truth and the superhuman knowledge of the Church, and everywhere were interspersed more ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Bare,—shameless,—till, for fresh disaster, From end to end, one April morn, 'Twas riddled like a pepper caster,— Drilled like a vellum of old time; And musing on this final mystery, The Poet left off scribbling rhyme, And took to studying Natural History. ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... to visit the cabinet of natural history. . . . The care-taker showed us a sort of packet bound in straw that he told us contained the skeleton of a dragon; a proof, added he, that the dragon is not a fabulous animal."—Memoirs of Jacques Casanova, Paris, 1843. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... Giles Sharp, by knowing the private traps belonging to the house, and the help of pulvis fulminans and other chemical preparations, and letting his fellow-servants into the scheme, carried on the deceit, without discovery, to the very last, so dextrously, that the late Dr. Plot, in his Natural History, relates the whole for fact, in the ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... off every winter, to reappear each summer. In other respects the man was in very good health. He had six children, all of whom were covered with excrescences like himself. The hands of one of these children has been represented by Edwards in his "Gleanings of Natural History." A picture of the hand of the father is shown in the fifty-ninth volume of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... grey monotony now that she had a companion in all her intellectual occupations. Fondly as she loved her father, she had not been able to hide from herself the narrowness of his education and the blind prejudice which governed his ideas upon almost every subject, from politics to natural history. Of the books which make the greater part of a solitary life she could never talk to him; and it was here that she had so sorely missed the counsellor and friend, who had taught her to love and to comprehend the great poets of the past—Homer and Virgil, Dante ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... were up which were to restore John to comparatively easy circumstances, and Marjory to respectability so far as her hands went, John asked her to go with him to hear a lecture. Just about that time he was rather wild concerning natural history, for which, I am sorry to say, Marjory did not care a pin. She indignantly repelled the idea of a gorilla somewhere toward the top of her family tree, asserting that she preferred to believe that she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... pattern, but a problem of Pottses, and of how to make men of them. To fall back on my old phrase, we have the feeling—one that Alnaschar, Pistol, Parolles, and Tappertit never gave us—that Potts is a piece of really scientific natural history as distinguished from comic story telling. His author is not throwing a stone at a creature of another and inferior order, but making a confession, with the effect that the stone hits everybody full in the conscience ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... has already shown in his account of this controversy; but at that time it was decided in favor of the analytical principle, and the question was for the time dropped. It came up for a second time, but created little excitement, in 1844, when an anonymous work, "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," directed the attention and the interest of scientists again to Lamarck and his doctrine. But this interest also soon came to an end, until through Darwin's first publication the half-forgotten man again suddenly attained ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... in your ORIGIN OF SPECIES as soon as I saw it out in New Zealand—not as knowing anything whatsoever of natural history, but it enters into so many deeply interesting questions, or rather it suggests so many, that it thoroughly fascinated me. I therefore feel all the greater pleasure that my pamphlet should please ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... naturalist, had a very narrow escape from missing his proper vocation. He was sent to a grammar-school, but exhibited no taste for books; therefore his father decided to apprentice him to a shoemaker. Fortunately, however, a discriminating physician had observed the boy's love of natural history, and took him into his own house to teach him botany ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... do not exaggerate in saying that, since the publication of White's 'Natural History of Selborne,' and of the 'Introduction to Entomology,' by Kirby and Spence, no work in our language is better calculated than the 'Zoological Recreations' to fulfil the avowed aim of its author—to furnish a hand-book which may cherish or awaken a ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... call, the "Yellow Sally." A fly that does not waste the day in giddy dances and the fervid waltz, but undergoes family incidents with decorum and discretion. He or she, as the case may be,—for the natural history of the river bank is a book to come hereafter, and of fifty men who make flies not one knows the name of the fly he is making,—in the early morning of June, or else in the second quarter of the afternoon, this Yellow Sally fares abroad, with ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... the corruptions of the Athenian state, and of all human society. It seems rather a harmless display of merry pranks, which hit alike at gods and men without any particular object in view. Whatever was remarkable about birds in natural history, in mythology, in the doctrine of divination, in the fables of Aesop, or even in proverbial expressions, has been ingeniously drawn to his purpose by the poet; who even goes back to cosmogony, and shows that at first the raven-winged Night laid a wind-egg, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Gibbon adds, that the diligent natives celebrated, either in verse or prose, three hundred and sixty uses to which the trunk, the branches, the leaves, the juice and the fruit of this plant were applied. Nothing can be more curious and interesting than the natural history ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... it makes one feel, in behalf of the enlightenment and progress of his age," said the Professor, "when he reads Izaak's extraordinary natural history." ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... Henrietta, decidedly, 'if Medusa had but one eye, and this dear creature two, I should die as miserably as the lady who loved the Apollo Belvidere. I have had oceans of knights errant—but such! I think of writing a natural history like—Cuvier.' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... said to London, "a nous deux." I desired to obtain a Professorship of either Physiology or Comparative Anatomy, and as vacancies occurred I applied, but in vain. My friend, Professor Tyndall, and I were candidates at the same time, he for the Chair of Physics and I for that of Natural History in the University of Toronto, which, fortunately, as it turned out, would not look at either of us. I say fortunately, not from any lack of respect for Toronto, but because I soon made up my mind that London was the place for me, and hence ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... three or four white men had ever been up the river as far as Tangkulap, it being a very lonely spot in the midst of dense forests, with no other white man living anywhere near. I had stayed with him for two months, making large natural history collections and seeing a great deal of both native and animal life. We had then returned down the river in Richardson's "gobang" (canoe) to Batu Puteh, a large tobacco estate, and the only one on this river. Here we were the guests ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... brought together; they wished for the unreasonable entertainment of railing and raillery. At length another objection was conjured up against the review; mathematicians complained that they were neglected to make room for experiments in natural philosophy; the historian sickened over works of natural history; the antiquaries would have nothing but discoveries of MSS. or fragments of antiquity. Medical works were called for by one party, and reprobated by another. In a word, each reader wished only to have accounts of books, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... stop reading novels and begin to read history, Miss Sylvia, here is the most remarkable history of Kentucky that was ever written or ever will be. It is by my father's old teacher of natural history in Transylvania University, Professor Rafinesque, who also had a wonderful botanical garden on this side of the town; perhaps the first ever ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... found with the lateral lobe extended on each side of the opening of the mouth into a horn-like projection (Figure 327). These were discovered in the cuttings of the Great Western Railway, near Chippenham, in 1841, and have been described by Mr. Pratt (Annals of Natural History ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... literature of natural history has, from very remote times, contained allusions to huge species of cephalopods, often accompanied by more or less fabulous and usually exaggerated descriptions of the creatures. . . . The description of the 'poulpe,' or devil-fish, by Victor Hugo, in 'Toilers of the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... for field work that yielded the specimens reported came from the National Science Foundation, the American Heart Association, Inc., and the Kansas University Endowment Association. Catalogue numbers of The University of Kansas Museum of Natural History are cited. The latitude (N) and longitude (W) are recorded to the nearest ...
— Neotropical Bats from Northern Mexico • Sydney Anderson
... of observation gave him great happiness, from 10 the time he rambled as a boy in the country in search of treasures of natural history, till, in his old age, he rose with the sun and went straightway to the woods near his home, enjoying still the beauties and wonders of nature. His strength of purpose and unwearied energy, combined with 15 his pure enthusiasm, made him successful in his ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... is not rapidly increasing must be in a decline" (S., p. 10). Human nature was neglected in the first-mentioned case, and here it is the turn of history to pass into the shade, history which, pace the President, has really a good deal more bearing upon a question of this kind than the "school-boy natural history" which he thinks capable of settling it. Thus we advance from breeding to Malthusianism. It is perhaps not wonderful that our next step should be the quiet, and of course painless, extinction ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... Wibley's daughter—or supposed daughter—was not with him in Hampshire. Her whereabouts worried me. I could not forget that a woman had taken part in our capture during the chalice case. While I was in Hampshire I spent half a day in Gilbert White's village. His 'Natural History of Selborne' has always delighted me. Selborne. If you were going to take a false name, Wigan, and your godfathers had not called you Murray, only James, what would you do? As likely as not you would take the name of some place with which you were familiar. ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... intellectual values seem alone to have counted with Emerson and his followers. With men his question was, "What can you teach me?" With Nature, "What new image or suggestion have you got for me to-day?" With science, "What ethical value do your facts hold?" With natural history, "Can I translate your facts and laws into my supernatural history?" With civil history, "Will your record help me to understand my own day and land?" The quintessence of things was what ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... increased. Science rather than literature, and practical utility more than entertainment, have been kept in the ascendency in the management of this institution. The hall is open for daily lectures, and some valuable telescopes and other apparatus belong to the institution. The cabinet of natural history contains many rare specimens that serve to elucidate the ancient and modern history of the country, especially in regard to some of the animals and vegetables indigenous to the island. The museum is built on a commanding eminence, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... and customs of the inhabitants, little new information could be expected. The skirts of their country had been examined in the southern parts, and extensive collections in natural history made there; but to the north of Endeavour River, the country had been seen only at a distance. The vast interior of this new continent was wrapped in total obscurity; and excited, perhaps on that very account, full as much curiosity as did the forms of the shores. This ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... swift in flight; 'their note is a slight twittering, which they seldom if ever exert but upon the wing.'—Goldsmith's Natural History.—Ed. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... la nature sur le fait. A happy, good-natured turn of phrase expressed by Fontenelle upon making some observations of natural history. K. ...
— Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas • Voltaire
... things. The Bible says the rabbit and the hare chew the cud. But they do not. They have a tremulous motion of the lip. But the Being that made them says they chew the cud. The Bible, therefore, is not inspired in natural history. Is it inspired in its astrology? No. Well, what is it inspired in? In its law? Thousands of people say that if it had not been for the ten commandments we would not have known any better than to rob and steal. Suppose a man planted an acre of potatoes, hoed them all summer, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... some curious information which should interest even those whose enthusiasm for the phenomena of natural history is normally but languid, and cannot fail to intrigue not only the entomologist but also the big game hunter, who would find it well worth his while to observe and study the tactics of this sagacious and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... curiosity to peruse Paley's Philosophy of Natural History. Judge Hobart has it. If you read it, be sure to make yourself mistress of all the terms. But, if you continue your Gibbon, it will find you in employment for some days. When you are weary of soaring with him, and wish to descend into common ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... without any unnatural constraint upon the gayety of the young. The Bible was the text book; the places mentioned in it were traced on maps; the manners and customs of different nations were explained; curious phenomena in the natural history of those countries were read; in a word, everything was done to cherish a spirit of humble, yet earnest inquiry. In this excellent family Mrs. —— remained till her marriage. In the course of fifteen years, she lost her ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... at score in the contrary direction, and we were told that in no part of the world did rattlesnakes attain to such a monstrous bigness as among the warm, flower-dotted rocks of Silverado. This is a contribution rather to the natural history of the Hansons than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... published in 1859, and it may be that "Romola" is the flower of the sombre Southern plant. Genius requires but a suggestion to create,—though, indeed, Mr. Lewes, who is a wonderfully clever man, au fait in all things, from acting to languages, living and dead, and from languages to natural history, may have anticipated Villari in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... suggested a great variety. One day they would study the botany of the breakfast-table, another day, its natural history. The study of butter would include that of the cow. Even that of the ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... name of the Count de Deux-Ponts. He was, however, a prince of the German empire, and brother to the heir of the Electorate of Bavaria: his companions were French officers of distinction, and men of science, who had been collecting specimens in the various branches of natural history. Nelson, having entertained them with the best his table could afford, told them they were at liberty to depart with their boat, and all that it contained: he only required them to promise that they would consider themselves as prisoners if the commander-in-chief should refuse ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... the attainment of his heart's desire. Never did he appear to better advantage than here, except when outside under the trees, surrounded by groups of little children, to whom he discoursed on wonders in natural history more wonderful than all the amazing works of nature set down in their nature study-books. All the animals, and birds, and creeping things in his natural history could talk and sing, could romp and play, could eat and drink—not infrequently too much—and in every way were superior ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... whatever talent he might display, to devote himself exclusively to classical, historical, or physical studies. The few men who still keep up the fair name of England by independent research and new discoveries in the fields of political and natural history, do not always come from our universities; and unless they possess independent means, they cannot devote more than the leisure hours, left by their official duties in church or state, to the prosecution ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... a band of knaves, but one has to treat them with more respect than one would pay to honest men elsewhere. The following day we were shewn the museum of natural history. It was rather a dull exhibition; but, at all events, one could laugh at it without exciting the wrath of the monks and the terrors of the Inquisition. We were shewn, amongst other wonders, a stuffed dragon, and the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... observations, recorded in Mr. Cunningham's Two Years in New South Wales, are as valuable as they are interesting; for hitherto we have known but little of the natural history of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... and the dire is not altogether without foundation in truth. I never met a Frenchman in society here, who appeared to wish to enhance his importance by what are called "airs," though a coxcomb in feeling is an animal not altogether unknown to the natural history of Paris, nor is the zoological science of M. Cuvier indispensable ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... practical acquaintance with Natural History leads the author to take an erroneous view of the bearing of his own theories on those of Mr. Darwin.—Review of 'Life and Habit,' by Mr. A. R. Wallace, in 'Nature,' ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... American Museum of Natural History would not be any good. Any good, that is, as objects of study. Our children will require to know, to see the past steadily and see it whole, the habits of bums, their manners and customs. So, as I say, my work would be invaluable. The wastrel ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... relating to it, are laid before the reader in a manner to which no one, of whatever creed, can object, and a new and very ingenious and rational mode of accounting for the phenomenon in question is proposed;—Dog, the fulness of which makes it acceptable to the lover of natural history, the sporting man, and the general reader:—and the last article, Education, one of great value, which describes the systems of instruction pursued in all ages and countries, and which, without entering upon the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... rubbish heaps of the neighbourhood, on which garden refuse was usually piled. A good many roots and plants can generally be found in such places, and by digging them up, Tam was soon able to make himself a number of bright and lively beds. Such self-help in natural history always lay very much ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... big white wolf killing a young caribou by snapping at the chest and heart. They declared this method of killing to be "a mathematical impossibility" and, by inference, a gross falsehood, utterly ruinous to true ideas of wolves and of natural history. ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... of natural history is expounded in most agreeable style by this delightful book. He has revealed a world of ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... own camp, too, much better chances for study will be found possible. You will have your own trees, flowers, and birds to notice and care for, and a record of them is valuable even in a very limited space. Think of the beautiful work of White—The Natural History ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... observation of others, but no man's opinion can take the place of the evidence of our own eyes. A naturalist once told me that chipmunks never climb trees. I have seen a chipmunk on a tree so I know that he is mistaken. As a rule the natives in any section only know enough woods-lore or natural history to meet their absolute needs. Accurate observation is, as a rule, rare among country people unless they are obliged to learn from necessity. Plenty of boys born and raised in the country are ignorant of the very simplest facts of their daily experience. They could ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... chapters of his work which dealt with the changes going on in the organic world as a volume by itself. This second volume of the Principles he gracefully dedicated to his friend Broderip, who had rendered him such valuable assistance in all questions connected with Natural History. ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... till after the survey of Albany and Rensselaer Counties. How glad are we, therefore, to find on this spot the first Museum of Economical Geology on this side of the Atlantic! Nay, embracing as it does all the department of Natural History, I see in it more than a European Museum of Economical Geology, splendid though they are. I fancy, rather, that I see here the germ of a Cis-Atlantic British Museum, or Garden ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... case may be. Such as he is in his other relations, such also is he in his school exercises; his mind is observant, sharp, ready, retentive; he is almost passive in the acquisition of knowledge. I say this in no disparagement of the idea of a clever boy. Geography, chronology, history, language, natural history, he heaps up the matter of these studies as treasures for a future day. It is the seven years of plenty with him: he gathers in by handfuls, like the Egyptians, without counting; and though, as time goes on, there is exercise for his argumentative powers in the Elements of Mathematics, and ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... that induces me to publish this stray leaf of natural history. I lay it before our young folks, not for their admiration, but for their criticism. Let each reader take his lead-pencil and remorselessly correct the orthography, the capitalization, and the punctuation of the essay. I shall not feel hurt at ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Merit of a Natural History depends upon the Truth of the Facts which are brought to support it, then an unprejudiced Eye-Witness is more proper to write it, than any other Person; and I dare even flatter myself, that this will not be disagreeable to the Publick notwithstanding its Resemblance to the particular Treatises ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... Eyre, The Bachelor's Moving Day, The Bad "Odor" in the West Ballad of the Good Litttle Boy aged ten "Behold how Pleasant a Thing," &c. Beautiful Snow Bit of Natural History, A Bird of Wisdom in Iowa, The Bingham on Rome Blocks and Blockheads Book Notices Boyhood Bow-Wow! Broadbrim to Aborigine ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... Natural History—Extracts from the Journal of Captain Denham, H.M. Surveying Vessel 'Herald,' 1857. Communicated by ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... an animal intended to represent his lost friend; but Jubal would not have recognized his portrait, since it looked much more like Sancho than the king of the forest. The children admired it immensely, however, and Ben gave them a lesson in natural history which was so interesting that it kept them busy and happy till bedtime; for the boy described what he had seen in such lively language, and illustrated in such a droll way, it was no ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... years after this Acadia remained French, under the feudal sway of its overlords, Razilly, Charnisay, La Tour, and Nicolas Denys, the historian of Acadia. [Footnote: He wrote The Description and Natural History of the Coasts of North America. An edition, translated and edited, with a memoir of the author, by W. F. Ganong, will be found in the publications of the Champlain Society (Toronto, 1908).] But in 1654 the fleet of Robert Sedgwick ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... girl ought to enjoy them, also, for they are wholesome, true to nature and human nature, and full of good sentiment. His stories are always interesting, sometimes thrilling, and often they contain much information, either of history or natural history. ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... shape for you other plans, for art-galleries, and for natural history galleries, and for many precious—many, it seems to me, needful—things; but this book plan is the easiest and needfullest, and would prove a considerable tonic to what we call our British constitution, which has fallen dropsical of late, and has an evil thirst, and evil ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... maintenance of schools and colleges, libraries, art and natural history museums, parks, playgrounds, hospitals, etc., are carried on at the expense of the government by means of taxation, inasmuch as these things are in the interests of mankind and for its upbuilding. In the city the ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... which specimens were obtained are as follows: TU (Tulane University), USNM (United States National Museum), MCZ (Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard College), CNHM (Chicago Natural History Museum), KU (Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas), UI (Museum of Natural ...
— Description of a New Softshell Turtle From the Southeastern United States • Robert G. Webb
... examined them, our search being rewarded by finding a nest of bees in each of them. It is a matter of honour with the natives to set aside a good portion of the honey for the bird. Although this action of the honey-bird is an established fact in natural history, it would be interesting to know whether he ever tries to entice quadrupeds also in assisting him ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... intended their names should stand for such collections of simple ideas as do really exist in things themselves, as well as for the complex idea in other men's minds, which in their ordinary acceptation they stand for, therefore, to define their names right, natural history is to be inquired into, and their properties are, with care and examination, to be found out. For it is not enough, for the avoiding inconveniences in discourse and arguings about natural bodies and substantial things, to have learned, from the propriety of ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... chapter in natural history. Infinitely more wholesome reading than the average tale of sport, since it gives a glimpse of the hunt from the point of view of the hunted. "True in substance but fascinating as fiction. It will interest old and young, city-bound and free-footed, ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... invest this sport with a charm known to no other. Trapping does not consist merely in the manufacture and setting of the various traps. The study of the habits and peculiarities of the different game—here becomes a matter of great importance; and the study of natural history under these circumstances affords a continual source ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... panther was trapped and shot in the town of Wardsboro, Vermont, in 1875. There can be no doubt whatever that it was a genuine panther, for its skin and bones, handsomely mounted, as taxidermists say, can be seen at any time in the Museum of Natural History in Boston. It is a fine specimen of the New England variety of the Felis concolor and would no doubt have proved an ugly customer to ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... posture, with her young ones in her false belly, which is a Purse, provided by Nature for the production, nutrition, and preservation of her young ones, which is described by Piso in the 24. Chapter of the fifth Book of his Natural History of Brasil. ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... "may I recite to you an interesting fact in natural history? The tiger is a great lord in the jungle, and was for centuries the terror of lesser beasts, including the wolf. The wolf, himself a hunter, wearied of being hunted. He took to associating with other wolves, and then the wolves, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... manners, that had made her as she was. Only how was it that he had never noticed it before? Poor little girl; it was only last Saturday when they had come back from looking over the house at Ealing that, drawing upon all the appropriate resources of natural history, he had called her a little vesper Vole, because she lived in a Bank and only came out of it in the evening. What Flossie called him that time didn't matter; it was her parsimony in the item of endearments ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Society, in Foregate Street, to which visitors are admitted on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, {6} with its collection of antiquities, fossils, and objects of natural history, should be visited. Also, the Arboretum and Public Pleasure Grounds, near Sansome Walk, where fetes are given and bands frequently play. The grounds are tastefully laid out, portions being set apart ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... composed of 100,000 rolls, would contain no more matter than one of our libraries composed of 50,000 manuscripts. It is well known, also, that a work was divided into as many rolls as the books which it contained. Thus the Natural History of Pliny, which in the Princeps edition of Venice forms but one folio volume, would, since it is divided into thirty-seven books, have formed thirty-seven rolls or volumes. If it were possible to compare elements of so different a nature, we should say that these rolls might be ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... Bridgewater to India, the gunner remained charged with the care of the Investigator's stores, and Mr. Evans, master's mate, was left sick at the hospital; Messrs. Brown, Bauer, and Allen stayed at Port Jackson to prosecute their researches in natural history, until my arrival with another ship, or until eighteen months should expire without their having received intimation that the voyage was to be continued; nine men were discharged at their own request, and the twenty-two remaining officers and men, including myself, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... sir, she made me, as far as she could, a—what shall I say? a kind of little intellectual gymnast, fit to begin any study; but she left me to choose my own line. Well, I was for natural history first; began like a girl; gathered wild flowers and simples at Epsom, along with an old woman; she discoursed on their traditional virtues, and knew little of their real properties: that ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... animals—in fact, any hunted game belonging to the fauna of the American Continent: furthermore, that each should contribute his quota of information about whatever animal should chance to be the subject of the narration—about its habits, its geographical range; in short, its general natural history, as well as the various modes of hunting it, practised in different places by different people. This, it was alleged, would render our camp conversation ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... M. Bergson is in his style, he is no less elaborate in his learning. In the history of philosophy, in mathematics and physics, and especially in natural history he has taken great pains to survey the ground and to assimilate the views and spirit of the most recent scholars. He might be called outright an expert in all these subjects, were it not for a certain externality and want of radical sympathy ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... truthful and graphic; and his descriptions of foreign plants and animals, and of the aspect of the distant regions which he had visited, had all the careful minuteness of those of a Dampier. He had a decided turn for natural history. My collection contains a murex, not unfrequent in the Mediterranean, which he found time enough to transfer, during the heat of the landing in Egypt, from the beach to his pocket; and the first ammonite I ever saw was a specimen, which I still retain, that he brought home with him from one of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... making it the familiar resort of men of letters, at whose conferences he personally assisted in his intervals of leisure from public duty. He selected the most suitable persons for the composition of works on civil and natural history, requiring the prefects of his provinces and cities to furnish, as far as possible, the necessary intelligence. He was a diligent student, and left many of the volumes which he read enriched with his commentaries. Above all, he was intent upon the acquisition of an extensive ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... A Hunt in a Horse-Pond ('Curiosities of Natural History') On Rats (same) Snakes and their Poison (same) ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... animal kingdom, such as small birds and quadrupeds, and insects with brilliant colors and of strange forms. What formerly would have been a repulsive object (such as a great longicorn or beetle) is worn with ease by the belles of our time. The use of such objects of natural history, however, has been about confined to the decoration of head-dresses or the manufacture ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... intelligence and hospitality charmed and encouraged me. Passing from the saloon through a lofty arch, we entered the Museum of Natural History, which was very large and contained a splendid collection. Here I saw gorgeous stuffed birds from tropical lands, ostriches' eggs, skins of boas, the maha (a large, harmless snake), porcupines, sea bulls, flying fish, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... likewise becomes perverted, or, perhaps, entirely suspended. The sensibility of the surface of the body is often remarkably impaired; and, for the time, partially or entirely abolished. In the case of a female somnambulist described in "The Philosophy of Natural History," by Dr. Smellie, he tells us that, when she was in one of her paroxysms, he ran a pin repeatedly into her arm—but not a muscle moved, nor was any symptom of pain discoverable. Here we may observe an ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... of his country cousin, who was so different from his sister and her friends that she could actually take an interest in his pursuits, and who, under her father's guidance, had learnt many interesting facts of natural history which the town-bred boy had ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... book, and in my extremest youth I never imagined otherwise. But "The Story of the Gadsbys" impressed me. So did "Barrack-room Ballads." So did pieces of "Soldiers Three." So did "Life's Handicap" and "Many Inventions." So did "The Jungle Book," despite its wild natural history. And I remember my eagerness for the publication of "The Seven Seas." I remember going early in the morning to Denny's bookshop to buy it. I remember the crimson piles of it in every bookshop in London. And ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... which could be applied to purposes of utility and material gains; even, as in our day, geology, chemistry, mechanics, engineering, having reference to the practical wants of men, command talent, and lead to certain reward. In Athens, rhetoric, mathematics, and natural history supplanted rhapsodies and speculations on God and Providence. Renown and wealth could only be secured by readiness and felicity of speech, and that was most valued which brought immediate reward, like eloquence. Men began ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... beings, invisible and resembling ourselves; for what else would they have resembled?" That is Comte's theological stage. "When philosophers recognised the absurdity of the fables about the gods, but had not yet gained an insight into natural history, they thought to explain the causes of phenomena by abstract expressions such as essences and faculties." That is the metaphysical stage. "It was only at a later period, that by observing the reciprocal mechanical action of bodies hypotheses were formed ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... Dupin. The two ladies, although related, were not on good terms, and never saw each other. There was not the least intercourse between the two families, and Thieriot was the only person who visited both. He was desired to endeavor to bring me again to M. Dupin's. M. de Francueil was then studying natural history and chemistry, and collecting a cabinet. I believe he aspired to become a member of the Academy of Sciences; to this effect he intended to write a book, and judged I might be of use to him in the undertaking. Madam de Dupin, who, on ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... commentary:—so I had to read for myself; and can say, in spite of my hard-heartedness, I did gain, though under impediments, a real satisfaction and some tone of the Eternal Melodies sounding, afar off, ever and anon, in my ear! This is fact; a truth in Natural History; from which you are welcome to draw inferences. A grand View of the Universe, everywhere the sound (unhappily far of, as it were) of a valiant, genuine Human Soul: this, even under rhyme, is a satisfaction ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the "Journal of Travel and Natural History" (No. 2), 1868. Now reprinted with considerable emendations and additions, by which I have endeavoured more clearly to express, and more fully to illustrate, my meaning in those parts which have ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... armpits, reaching to his shoulder-blades behind, and nearly to his collar-bone in front. His red head was only partly covered by a fragment of an old white wool hat; and he looked at the cub with a curiosity as intense as that with which the cub looked at him. Each was taking first lessons in natural history. ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... herself each day before all The learned tutors whom for him she hired, Was, that his breeding should be strictly moral: Much into all his studies she inquired, And so they were submitted first to her, all, Arts, sciences—no branch was made a mystery To Juan's eyes, excepting natural history. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... noted for his extensive and valuable collection of objects of natural history. In 1775 he opened a museum in Leicester Square, in which his collection was shown to the public; but ten years later he was compelled to dispose of it. The new proprietor exhibited the collection for some years, but it was finally sold ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... Provisions and Ration Trade and Manufactures Population Natives Climate Natural History Religion Morals Amusements Military Force Building: with Reference to the particular Houses, etc. of ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... the elephants are numerous and destructive to the crops, as well as dangerous to travellers, while their tusks are small and of comparatively little value, the government pays a small reward for killing them. According to Sir Emerson Tennant, [Footnote: Natural History of Ceylon, chap. iv.] in three years prior to 1848, the premium was paid for 3,500 elephants in a part of the northern district, and between 1851 and 1856 for 2,000 in the southern district. Major Rogers, famous as an elephant shooter in ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... taken a great fancy to Minnie, had requested Herbert to place her perch close to them; for, though she liked to be out of doors, her terror of cats was so great, that unless she was closely guarded she preferred to remain in her cage. It was a book on natural history Herbert was reading from. In the midst of a dry description of the habits of the humming-bird, he suddenly broke ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... own line. After a man has been delving in nothing but theological works for three months, a few pages in the Patent-office Report will do him more good than Doctor Dick on "The Perseverance of the Saints." Better than this, as a diversion, is it to have some department of natural history or art to which you may turn, a case of shells or birds, or a season ticket to some picture gallery. If you do nothing but play on one string of the bass viol, you will wear it out and get no healthy tune. Better take the bow and sweep it clear across in one grand swirl, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... inhabitants of the frozen world, their manners and their customs, the climate and their cities, their productions and their sources of wealth. Its woollen surface, with its various dyes—each dye containing an episode of an island or a state, a point of natural history, or of art ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... into the careers alike of Shakespeare and of various members of the Earl of Pembroke's family—one of the chief in Wiltshire. Aubrey rescued from oblivion many anecdotes—scandalous and otherwise—both about the third Earl of Pembroke and about Shakespeare. Of the former he wrote in his 'Natural History of Wiltshire' (ed. Britton, 1847), recalling the earl's relations with Massinger and many other men of letters. Of Shakespeare, Aubrey narrated much lively gossip in his 'Lives of Eminent Persons.' But neither in his account of Pembroke nor in his account of Shakespeare ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... invention of the English of the nineteenth century has been the idea, based on a wide knowledge of natural history, that there never was creation. The animal species had been considered by all the philosophers (except Epicurus and the Epicureans) as being created once and for all and remaining invariable. Nothing of the kind. Matter, eternally ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... of those that have been published here, and William Beverley Harison, of New York, has brought them out in a series of neat pamphlets, under the title of 'The Great Round World Natural History Stories.' These sketches need no commendation from us; you know what they are, for you have felt their gentle influence in inculcating a love for the faithful and affectionate dumb creatures that depend upon us for comfort and protection. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 30, June 3, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... reading and his notes were his profession, and that they took five hours and two hours respectively of each day. "Then," said he, "every man should have a diversion as well as a profession. My Natural History is my diversion." That took two hours a day more. The men used to bring him birds and fish, but on a long cruise he had to satisfy himself with centipedes and cockroaches and such small game. He was the only naturalist I ever met who ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... be very dreadful, for the box is not any longer than we are. Natural history is very useful; I've heard mamma say so, and I shall talk with him while we rest here," answered Flo, nodding toward the eye which now took ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... side of the Arno, a little beyond the Cabinet Physique and Museum of Natural History stands the Palazzo Pitti, the residence of the Grand Duke. It is a vast building and has a large and choice collection of pictures; but its finest ornament in my opinion is the statue of Venus by Canova, which to me at least ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... them have been extraordinary popular and have become standard works. Reid has not been surpassed by any other writer in combining at one and the same time, the features of thrilling adventure and great instruction in the fields of natural history. Many of the works have been translated into Continental languages and are as highly esteemed among the French and ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... and natural history of the county have been thoroughly treated by various writers; but there are, I have noticed, fewer books than there should be upon Sussex men and women. Carlyle's saying that every clergyman should write the history of his parish (which one might amend to the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... contents are varied so as to suit Children of all ages, embracing Biography, Natural History, Dialogues, Tales, &c.; and it is intended that the whole should be simple enough to make it suitable for the poor. It is hoped the Work may be found useful for Monthly Distribution among School-Children; for which purpose it will be sold at 14s. ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... much the dear Doctor knows of my diet and habits! Malaria practically does not exist in these islands; it is a negligeable quantity. What really bothers us a little is the mosquito affair—the so-called elephantiasis—ask Ross about it. A real romance of natural history, quoi! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... And Garden, Fruits, Flowers, Etc., Cattle, Sheep, and Swine, Dogs, Etc., Horses, Riding, Etc., Poultry, Pigeons, and Bees, Angling and Fishing, Boating, Canoeing, and Sailing, Field Sports and Natural History, Hunting, Shooting, Etc., Architecture and Building, Landscape Gardening, ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... make of this roving swallow another bird called a secretary. I suppose you've read some natural history, and know there's ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... volcanic. Number of craters. Leafless bushes. Colony at Charles Island. James Island. Salt-lake in crater. Natural history of the group. Ornithology, curious finches. Reptiles. Great tortoises, habits of. Marine Lizard, feeds on Sea-weed. Terrestrial Lizard, burrowing habits, herbivorous. Importance of reptiles in the Archipelago. Fish, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... receive encouragement by a direct line of mail steamships to the rising Empire of Brazil. The distinguished party of men of science who have recently left our country to make a scientific exploration of the natural history and rivers and mountain ranges of that region have received from the Emperor that generous welcome which was to have been expected from his constant friendship for the United States and his well-known zeal in promoting the advancement of knowledge. A hope is entertained ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... of a fish, the fungus at the root of a garden flower, and the slime upon a sea-wet rock—ten thousand such things bear their witness and are illuminated. And not only did these tentacular generalizations gather all the facts of natural history and comparative anatomy together, but they seemed always stretching out further and further into a world of interests that lay ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... other home at Pyrford, all the day's relaxations were of this intimate kind. [Footnote: Here, too, work was disturbed by his natural history researches. He writes apologetically to Mr. Hudson as to some mistake in a letter: 'I can plead as a disturbing cause three young brown owls, quite tame; one barks, and two whistle, squeak—between a railway guard and a door-hinge. The barker lets me get within four or five ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... once they caught some red mullet, which the "common sweeper" and his neighbour both agreed was "not natural in those waters." As for mere sweeping, it bored them profoundly to talk about it. I only learned later as part of the natural history of mines, that if you rake the tri-nitro-toluol by hand out of a German mine you develop eruptions and skin-poisoning. But on the authority of two experts, there is nothing in sweeping. ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... ruling workmen, now in uninhabited, now in half-savage islands; his winters were set apart, first at the Andersonian Institution, then at the University of Edinburgh to improve himself in mathematics, chemistry, natural history, agriculture, moral philosophy, and logic; a bearded student—although no doubt scrupulously shaved. I find one reference to his years in class which will have a meaning for all who have studied in Scottish Universities. He ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... drains off the water from a marshy place, one generally stumbles upon all sorts of hitherto undiscovered, curious beetles, odd looking moths and spiral-shaped, creeping things in these routed out lurking places, which nobody ever saw before or read of in the natural history books; and at such times a man bethinks him how wonderful it is of Mother Nature to provide even such holes and corners as these with living inhabitants which never see the light of ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... clear idea also of the history of Zoroastrian literature and of the changes and chances through which with varying fortunes the scriptures have passed. The original Zoroastrian Avesta, according to tradition, was in itself a literature of vast dimensions. Pliny, in his 'Natural History,' speaks of two million verses of Zoroaster; to which may be added the Persian assertion that the original copy of the scriptures was written upon twelve thousand parchments, with gold illuminated letters, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... 115; see also to Eichler, 'Excurs. Morpholog. de format. flor. Gymnosperm.,' in "Mart. Flor. Brasil," abstracted in English in 'Natural History ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... him to the confidence of the promoters of the expedition. Macgregor Laud, esquire, of Liverpool, as supercargo, and Mr. Briggs, of Liverpool, surgeon, accompanied the expedition. To the latter gentlemen was confided the botanical department, and also that of natural history, being fully competent to investigate the very important branches connected with those sciences, either for ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... line 9 from foot. Daines Barrington. Daines Barrington (1727-1800), the correspondent of Gilbert White, many of whose letters in The Natural History of Selborne are addressed to him. Indeed it was Barrington who inspired that work:—a circumstance which must atone for his exterminatory raid on the Temple sparrows. His Chambers were at 5 King's Bench Walk. Barrington became a Bencher in 1777 and died in 1800. He is buried ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb |
