"Pairing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... discussing the arrangements with Mrs. Hargreaves, and seeing that a dozen of claret which his orderly had at his orders brought across, with a basket of fruit, was properly secured on the roof, they sauntered off with the girls, soon insensibly pairing off. ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... as they remain celibate we are prepared with some sort of ideas about the future development of their social life, clubs, hostels, living-in, and so forth. But at present we haven't any ideas at all about the adaptation of the natural pairing instinct to the new state of affairs. Ultimately the employee marries; they hold out as long as they possibly can, but ultimately they have to. They have to, even in the face of an economic system that holds out no prospects of anything but insecurity ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... lamp he consulted his watch, but even without that he knew what the hour was. Prayer meeting at the corner church was over; boys of his own age were ranging themselves along the curb, waiting for the girl of the moment. When she came, a youth would appear miraculously beside her, and the world-old pairing off ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy, and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion-sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... is of very ancient origin. It is doubtful whether even the primitive man was not governed in the intercourse of the sexes by some recognition of the union being confined to one chosen one. No greater promiscuity can certainly be supposed than occurs in the lower animals, where pairing is the law. The nobler animals, as the lion, elephant, etc., never have but one mate, and even in case of death do not remate. As men advanced, civil codes were inaugurated and certain protection given to the choice of the parties. The earliest ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... all delighted at the number of our minority, which is far greater than anybody expected the first time, and would have been greater still had not many members quitted the House, with or without pairing, in the expectation that the subject would not come on. But the greatest triumph of all ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... if you came to think of it, that the thing he called his genius, and the thing he called his love, should have chosen the same moment to abandon him. Was it—was it possible—that there was some vital connection between them? As the singing of birds in the pairing season, was his genius merely a rather peculiar symptom of the very ordinary condition known as falling in love? So that, failing that source of inspiration—? That no doubt was what was the matter with him. His imagination languished ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... was she to think? All the girls were pairing off with the boys for the after-chapel ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... if two flocks are mixed together, each will breed with its own variety." Mr. Darwin has collected many facts illustrating this point. One of the chief pigeon-fanciers in England informed him that, if free to choose, each breed would prefer pairing with its own kind. Among the wild horses in Paraguay those of the same colour and size associate together; while in Circassia there are three races of horses which have received special names, and which, when living a free life, almost ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... seemingly shrivelled up in the glorified feminine vision of mundane things. The moral is to be found on page 447. "Of all the forms offered to us by life it is the one demanding a couple to realise it fully which is the most imperative. Pairing off is the fate of mankind. And if two beings thrown together, mutually attracted, resist the necessity, fail in understanding, and stop voluntarily short ... they are ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... ladies' man, who plays croquet and the flute, pleads guilty to having cultivated the Nine, and affects a simpering pooh-pooh when he is impeached with having inspired that wicked but so witty bit of scandal in the local paper. By singularity of pairing, his fast friend is the muscular sub, who walks against time, and can write his initials with a ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... which followed this speech, and in which Miss Saville, after an ineffectual struggle to repress the inclination, out of respect to Mrs. Coleman, was fain to join, dinner was announced, and Coleman pairing off with the young lady, whilst I gave my arm to the old one, we proceeded to ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... or forgiven. I was a little anxious to know whether her ladyship would honour me with an agnomen. I could not learn this from Miss Bland, and I was too prudent to betray my curiosity: I afterwards heard it, however. Pairing me and Mr. M'Leod, whom she had seen together, her ladyship observed, that Sawney and Yawney were made for each other; and she sketched, in strong caricature, my relaxed elongation of limb, and his rigid rectangularity. A slight degree of fear of Lady Geraldine's ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... aches. He was grateful, and he said so. Margaret was silent and plied her needle, planning how she might escape the party if Claudius changed his mind and went, and how she could with decency leave herself the option of going if he remained. She did not intend to give people any farther chance of pairing her off with Claudius or any one else whom they thought she fancied, and she blamed herself for having given people even the shadow of an idea that such ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... then, to get back for safety to the ornithological aspect of the subject. Here there can be no penalties for heresy. And here I make bold to avow my conviction that the pairing season is not the only point of interest in the life of the birds; nor is the instinct by which they mate altogether and beyond comparison the noblest passion ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... about them couples were unpairing and pairing again with an ease and rapidity that encouraged Undine to bide her time. It was simply a question of making Van Degen want her enough, and of not being obliged to abandon the game before he wanted her as much as she meant he should. This was precisely what would happen if she were compelled to ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... Mary Ann Fothergill? She almost laughed at the thought of anybody missing Mary Ann. John Middleton? Hanford Weston? There was not a boy in the school she would miss for an instant, she told herself with conviction. Not one of them realized her ideal. There was much pairing off of boy and girl in school, but Marcia, like the heroine of "Comin' thro' the Rye," was good friends with all the boys and intimate with none. They all counted it an honor to wait upon her, and she cared not a farthing for any. She felt herself too young, of ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Saturnalia which fell at Midwinter. In modern Europe, as we shall learn later on, the great Midsummer festival has been above all a festival of lovers and of fire; one of its principal features is the pairing of sweethearts, who leap over the bonfires hand in hand or throw flowers across the flames to each other. And many omens of love and marriage are drawn from the flowers which bloom at this mystic season. It is the time of the roses and of love. Yet the innocence and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... hopped for joy, and that very day was begun the celebrated Building of the Boat. All their ordinary business fell into arrears. It was the time of year when they should have been pairing, but not a thrush's nest was built except this big one, and so Solomon soon ran short of thrushes with which to supply the demand from the mainland. The stout, rather greedy children, who look so well in perambulators but get ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... formed either at restaurants or at each other's houses. During the time occupied in the balls and promenades, as every body goes masked either in character or in domino, there is a fine opportunity for pairing off, and it is no doubt turned to account. This is a pretty accurate account of a Roman Carnaval. A great deal of wit and repartee takes place among the masks and they are in general extremely well supported, and indeed they ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... field. The savage family is at first barely discernible amid the primitive social chaos in which it had its origin. Along with polyandry and polygyny in various degrees and forms, instances of exclusive pairing, of at least a temporary character, are to be found among the lowest existing savages, and there are reasons for supposing that such may have been the case even in primeval times. But it was impossible ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... parties. Blanche's ambition of tennis courts all over the lawn was fulfilled, and sundry dinners, which were crosses to Alice, who had neither faculty nor training for a leader and hostess, suffered much from the menu, more from the pairing of her guests, more again in catching her chief lady's eye after, and most of all from her husband's scowls and subsequent growls and their consequence, for Ursula broke out, 'It is not fair to blame my mother. How should she have all the savoir-faire, or what you may call it, of Aunt ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... radically from the animals, and precisely through these added qualities he took not only an instinctive, but an artificial and reasoned, interest in sexual practices; and this resulted in a state of consciousness which made sexual life uninterruptedly interesting, in contrast with a pairing season among animals, and also in a constant tendency toward promiscuity, whether this state was ever actually reached or not. The widespread and various unnatural sex practices, the use of aphrodisiacs, the practice of drawing attention to the girl at puberty, phallic worship, erotic dances, ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... once set sail and doubled Cape Horn. The Strait of Lemaire was then crossed, and Staten Island reconnoitred. Here a good anchorage was found. Quantities of whales abound in these latitudes. It was now their pairing season, and seals and sea-lions, penguins ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... couples will be increased to four or five, and little children of three years old end by pairing of their own accord ten or a dozen couples of ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... each, their convalescence could have been no more agreeable in the midst of civilization. And as Barry gained strength, yet before Jerry Rolfe was allowed in to worry him about the ship, he found himself and Natalie, Little and Mrs. Goring, pairing off in their slow rambles, and once more awkwardness of speech descended upon him like a wet blanket. He had caught a suggestive look on Little's face, and an answering smile on Mrs. Goring's, that told him as plainly as words that his opportunity ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... blue smock and turned up his shirt-sleeves and now went to see to his birds. That was his great hobby and his work on Sunday every week. All the walls were hung with cages: in that big one were two canaries, pairing; in the next, a hen-canary sitting on her eggs; and in a little wire castle lived a linnet and a cock-canary and three speckled youngsters. The finches were in a long row of darkened cages and moulting-boxes. When he put ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... no political preferences, who mixed with every one, and who was admirably placed for bringing families together, for uniting houses, arranging matches of expediency or balancing social positions, pairing off money with money, or joining an ancient title to a newly made fortune. It was as though marriages in Paris had an occult Providence in the person of this rare sort of man in whom were blended the priest and the lawyer, the apostle and the diplomatist—Fenelon and M. de Foy. The Abbe Blampoix ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... breeder chooses out for pairing only such individuals as possess the character desired by him in a somewhat higher degree than the rest of the race. Some of the descendants inherit this character, often in a still higher degree, and if this method be pursued ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... wood, composed of large trees, both hard wood and pine, I had found a group of three summer tanagers, two males and one female,—the usual proportion with birds generally, one may almost say, in the pairing season. The female was the first of her sex that I had seen, and I remarked with pleasure the comparative brightness of her dress. Among tanagers, as among negroes, red and yellow are esteemed a pretty good match. At this point, too, in a cluster of pines, I caught ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... the spinsters, and chiefly, perhaps, from a consciousness of good clothes. The married men stood grouped in corners and talked of their every-day affairs. The young people clustered together in little knots, governed more or less by natural selection— only the veterans of several seasons pairing off into the discreet retirement of stairs and hall angles. At the further end of the long drawing-room, Farnham's eyes at last lighted upon the object of his quest. Alice sat in the midst of a group of young girls who had intrenched themselves in a corner of the room, and defied all the efforts ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... snow petrels pairing off, but no eggs were seen in any of the nest-crevices. They were so tame that it was quite easy to catch them, but they had a habit of ejecting their partially digested food, a yellow oily mess, straight at one. This was the stuff we ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... her brain was afire with a hope that shamed her. Three could not walk abreast on the narrow sidewalk up the hill, and when she heard Hendricks say after the group had parleyed a moment, "Well, Jake, good night; I'll go on home with the colonel," she managed the pairing off so that the young man fell to her, and the colonel and Mrs. Culpepper walked before the younger people, and they all talked together. But at Lincoln Avenue, the younger people disconnected themselves from the talk of the elders, and finally lagged a few feet behind. When they ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Except in the pairing time, the old males usually live by themselves. The old females, and the immature males, on the other hand, are often met with in twos and threes; and the former occasionally have young with them, though the pregnant females usually separate themselves, and sometimes remain apart after ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... been convinced of the existence of distinct kinds ('species') in both the vegetable and animal worlds; he recognised that plants of definite kinds yielded particular fruits, and that different kinds of animals did not breed promiscuously with one another, but that, pairing each with its own kind, all gave rise to like offspring, and thus arose the idea of distinct 'species' of ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... Beach—their promenades on the verandas of the two great hotels, their appearance on the links and tennis-courts together, their daily encounter at the bathing-hour, their inevitable meeting and pairing on lawn, in ballroom, afloat, ashore, wherever young people gathered under the whip of light social obligations or in ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... stridulating by themselves, here and there, teasing the passing fair with their antennae. The future mothers stroll about gravely, with their sabre half-raised. The agitation and feverish excitement means that the great business of pairing is at hand. The fact will ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... too much must not be attempted at once. Pairing those very unlike oftener results in loss than gain. Avoid all extremes, and endeavor by moderate degrees to ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... president had stalked in, and his high querulous voice was marshaling the party breakfastward. Ford manoeuvered skilfully in the pairing off, and so succeeded in securing Miss Adair for a companion on the short walk across to the ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... sinful selfishness, what they call "exclusive and idolatrous attachment" of two persons for each other, and aim to break up by "criticism" and other means every thing of this kind in the community; that they teach the advisability of pairing persons of different ages, the young of one sex with the aged of the other, and as the matter is under the control and management of the more aged members it is thus arranged; that "persons are not obliged, under any circumstances, to ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... Perhaps the pairing has not been altogether accidental. Whether or no, it is done; and the conversation, hitherto general, is reduced to the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... and cards. Perhaps the true subject of the "Conjugal Love" is conversation, whose laws are profoundly eliminated. It is false, if literally applied to marriage. For God is the bride or bridegroom of the soul. Heaven is not the pairing of two, but the communion of all souls. We meet, and dwell an instant under the temple of one thought, and part as though we parted not, to join another thought in other fellowships of joy. So far from there being anything divine ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... only then shall we have true Judaism in London and a burst of literary splendor far exceeding that of the much overpraised Spanish School, none of whom had that true lyrical gift which is like the carol of the bird in the pairing season. O why have I not the bird's privileges as well as its gift of song? Why can I not pair at will? Oh the stupid Rabbis who forbade polygamy. Verily as the verse says: The Law of Moses is perfect, enlightening the eyes—marriage, divorce, all is regulated with the height ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... have resolved to abstain from pairing during the present Session." So The Times. "Birds in their little nests agree," quoth the eminent Dr. WATTS; but these Parliamentary Birds will belie their name of "Unionists" if they refuse ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various
... superior officer appeared to enjoy the skating-parties most, when the frost would allow us to indulge in this pastime, and I could not help noticing how regularly we seemed to separate into two parties; the skipper invariably pairing off with Florrie, and leaving Amy ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... day I stood for some time within twenty feet of a mother and three children, who sat on an elm bough over my head gasping in the sultry air, and holding their wings half-spread for coolness. All birds during the pairing season become more or less sentimental, and murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their habitual song. The crow is very comical as a lover, and to hear him trying to soften his croak to the proper Saint Preux(1) ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... enclosed a great treeless plateau, a "lande." We used to get on to this lande by walking up the bed of a rivulet, and once on it we had perfect massacres of winged game, especially of that sort of gray grouse called ptarmigan by the English. It was these birds' pairing season. They never flew away, and when we killed one the other would ruffle up its feathers in a fury and fly pecking at our legs. The wooded sides of the island must have been full of reindeer, to judge by the quantities of tracks to be seen on every ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... insulting Fulk by pairing him with old Hall, the ex-agent; but Hall found it out in time, and refused to go, and when the moment came everybody fell back, and Fulk found himself close to poor little Trevor, who tried to get his hand out of Perrault's and cling to him; but ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... egg or two eggs, as soon as laid: but as the cuckoo stays a shorter time in this country than any other migratory bird, she certainly would not have time enough for the successive hatchings. Hence we can perceive in the fact of the cuckoo pairing several times, and laying her eggs at intervals, the cause of her depositing her eggs in other birds' nests, and leaving them to the care of foster-parents. I am strongly inclined to believe that this view is correct, from having been independently led (as we ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... snow-birds, on a road over the heights of the Alleghanies. Its flight, like that of the Partridge, is laborious and steady. Though they collect their food from the ground, they are frequently shot on trees, their perch being either the main branches, or the topmost twigs. At the time of pairing, they exhibit a little of the jealous disposition of the tribe, but his character vindicated by his bravery, and the victory achieved, he retires from his fraternity to assist his mate in the formation of her nest. The flesh of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... well-known definition of marriage, that he has not escaped its fascinations. "Schopenhauer ignores all phenomena which are not in support of his myth," says Lucka, who denies this instinct of philoprogenitiveness and would substitute for it a "pairing-instinct." "The experience of others," he argues, "not our own instinct, has taught us that children may, not necessarily must, be the result of the union of the sexes. Into the mediaeval ideal which reached its climax in metaphysical ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... must forage where the grain is grown: I share my kopecks with the village priest, Who winnows peccadillos by the sheaf." Then Zanthon, laughing in his foxy beard: "When Amine meets me in the plane-tree walk (Where pairing little finches seek to build, We saw the cuckoo thieve their nests when boys), Shall I then tell her, in my peasant way, Your broken promise, and her troth denied?" And he was gone—gone, with the stud he bought From Schamyl's son, up by Caucasus way, Leaving me solitude to reason with. Around me, ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... literature of all peoples contains this physiological perversion. Birds do not sing hymns; the song of the male is simply to call the female and when the pairing-season ends ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the old patron saint of Devonshire, (which however I cannot find in Prince's or in Fuller's Worthies,)[313] this discovers the suggestion which led Butler to the name of his hero; burlesquing the new saint by pairing him with the chivalrous saint of the county; hence, like the Knight ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... instinct is not more certainly the means of securing and providing for her young, than her gratification in the act of maternal care is great and is also needless for making her perform that duty. The grove is not made vocal during pairing and incubation, in order to secure the laying or the hatching of eggs; for if it were as still as the grave, or were filled with the most discordant croaking, the process would be as well performed. So, too, mark the care with which injuries are remedied by what ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... our four-footed kindred. I refer to the practice of courtship. The male of all birds, so far as I know, pays suit to the female and seeks to please and attract her.[2] This the quadrupeds do not do; there is no period of courtship among them, and no mating or pairing as among the birds. The male fights for the female, but he does not seek to win her by delicate attentions. If there are any exceptions to this rule, I do not know them. There seems to be among the birds ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... conscious of the store Suckled by it, and only after storm Casts up its loosened thoughts upon the shore. To this end my deeps are stirred; And I deem well why life unshared Was ordained me of yore. In pairing-time, we know, the bird Kindles to its deepmost splendour, And the tender Voice is tenderest in its throat; Were its love, for ever nigh it, Never by it, It might keep a vernal note, The crocean and amethystine In their pristine Lustre linger on its coat. Therefore must my song-bower ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... quite different from that of the female. The male calls with a hoarse harsh cry, something between the grunt of a pig and the bellow of a bull; the call of the tigress is more like the prolonged mew of a cat much intensified. During the pairing season the call is sharper and shorter, and ends in a sudden break. At that time, too, they cry at more frequent intervals. The roar of the tiger is quite unlike the call. Once heard it is not easily forgotten, The natives who live in the jungles can tell one tiger from another ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... chaps Declare the numerical run Of women and men in the world Is Twenty to Twenty-and-one: And hence in the pairing, you see, Since wooing and wedding began, For every connubial score They've ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... but eats crumbs of bread-and-milk too. Sun-birds visit the pomegranate flowers, and eat insects therein too, as well as nectar. The young whydah birds crouch closely together at night for heat. They look like a woolly ball on a branch. By day they engage in pairing and coaxing each other. They come to the same twig every night. Like children, they try and lift heavy weights of ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... latter again is believed to have been a cross between several long-woolled sheep. Mr. Spooner, after considering the various cases which have been carefully recorded, concludes "that from a judicious pairing of cross-bred animals it is practicable to establish a new breed." On the Continent the history of several crossed races of cattle and of other animals has been well ascertained. To give one instance: the King of Wurtemberg, after twenty-five years' careful ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... the pairing season, they live in very numerous societies or bands. They choose a place in the forest to stay there, and thence they start every morning for their hunting expeditions. The members of each band remain faithfully attached to each other, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... to the direct action of different conditions of life. In other cases some slight effect may possibly be attributed to natural selection, as cats in many cases have largely to support themselves and to escape diverse dangers. But man, owing to the difficulty of pairing cats, has done nothing by methodical selection; and probably very little by unintentional selection; though in each litter he generally saves the prettiest, and values most a good breed of mouse- or rat-catchers. Those cats ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... deem well why life unshared Was ordained me of yore. In pairing time, we know, the bird Kindles to its deepmost splendour, And the tender Voice is tenderest in its throat. Were its love, forever by it, Never nigh it, It might keep a vernal note, The crocean and amethystine In their pristine Lustre linger on ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... show a hint of spring, in pairing plovers and breaking eglantine, Senhouse, in a temporary dejection, ceased work upon his poem, and Glyde said that he must know the news. All through the winter they had had little communication with the world beyond their gates. A shepherd homing from the folds, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... year, Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random, Renascent with grossest Nature or among animals, Of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing, Of the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds, Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves, Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, I them chanting, The overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating, The welcome nearness, the sight of the perfect body, The swimmer swimming naked in the ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... I speak English," he snapped, with his eyes glaring rebuke. "She promised this evening to become Mrs. Braddock. We shall marry—so we have arranged—in the springtime, which is the natural pairing season for human beings as well as for birds. And I am glad to say that Mrs. Jasher takes a deep ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... where all the children are treated alike. One notable peculiarity in the character of the woman is that she is capricious and coy, and has less straightforwardness than the man. It is the same in the female of every sex about the time of pairing, and there can be little doubt as to the origin of the peculiarity. If any race of animals existed in whom the sexual passions of the female were as quickly and as directly stirred as those of the male, each would mate with ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... for the females to come to oviposit, they would stand guard at the puncture awaiting the coming of the female. On one occasion I made minute punctures in the husk of eight black walnuts and in a little while a male fly was located at each puncture. Pairing took place usually as soon as the female came and began to lay eggs. Sometimes a male would be found at a puncture in the early morning and would hold its position against all coming males throughout the entire day. When another male would come to the nut the two flies would rear up facing ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... as the domestic animals are concerned, it is true that they throw off their young in the spring. The reference to a similar interruption in the case of mankind (see above, p. 571) may embody the recollection of a period when a regular pairing season and breeding time existed among mankind. See Westermarck, The History of Human ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... of cloaks issued single file from the women's dressing-room and, each one pairing with a coated beau like dancers meeting in a cotillion figure, drifted through the door with sleepy happy laughter—through the door into the dark where autos backed and snorted and parties called to one another and ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... if such differences had appeared in nature, the organisms presenting them would have been entitled to rank as distinct species—or even, in many cases, as distinct genera. Yet we know, as a matter of fact, that all these differences have been produced by a process of artificial selection, or pairing, which has been continuously practised by horticulturists and breeders through a number of generations. It is the business of these men to note the individual organisms which show most variation in the directions required, and then to propagate from these individuals, in ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... and in thy snowy rest,— In that seclusion which is like a nest For blameless human maids beheld of those Who come from God,—thou hast in thy repose No thought of me,—no thought of pairing-time. For thou'rt the sworn opponent of the rhyme That lovers make in kissing; and anon My very love will vex thee ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... the long tables by squads and tribes. Those who belong together sit together. There is no attempt at pairing off for conversation or mutual entertainment, at speech-making or toasting. The business in hand is to eat, and it is attended to. The bridegroom, at the head of the table, with his shiny silk hat on, sets the example; and the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... the bill," and whenever a Whig moved to adjourn his motion was promptly negatived. As darkness came on the lamps were lighted and trimmed, candles were brought into the hall, and the older and feebler members "pairing off," took their cloaks and hats and left. The House being in Committee of the Whole, whenever they found no quorum voting, were obliged by the parliamentary usage to rise and report that fact to the House. When this was done, and the House was again in session as a House, behold, a quorum ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore |
