"Webbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slamming of car doors, a whistle, the snort of the engine as it took up its way again out toward the rosy sky, its headlight weird like a sick candle against the dawn, its tail light winking with a leer and mocking at the mountains as it clattered away like a row of gray ducks lifting webbed feet and flinging back space to ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... gaze at the sun, and those who were unable to do so were destroyed. Linnaeus even believed, on ancient authority, that one of the feet of this bird had all the toes divided, while the other was partly webbed, so that it could swim with one foot, and grasp a fish with the other." But that educated eye is now dim, and those talons are nerveless. Its shrill scream seems yet to linger in its throat, and the ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... in the more inaccessible parts of America, and the more northern countries of Europe, affords a curious instance of what may be called a compound structure. It has the fore-feet of a land animal, and the hind ones of an aquatic one—the latter only being webbed. Its tail is covered with scales like a fish, and serves to direct its course in the water, in which it spends much ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... washed with a fuller gold The golden sheaves patterned upon a cone Of downland by him farther from the sea. So still, he seemed a thing woven of earth, A life rooted and fixed as were the oaks Locked in the soil, their bases webbed with fleece Of sheltering ewes, he watched across the valley, And the hour passed, and the black mill grew and grew, And then a light came in a far window Of a grey farm cresting the hill beyond, And sudden tides beat on him as he saw A white ...
— Preludes 1921-1922 • John Drinkwater
... between what he should eat for dinner and what he should reserve for breakfast, he fell to, ate sparingly, lit his pipe, and gazed around the wretched room, of which the walls were blue-washed with a most offensive shade of blue, the bare floor was frankly dry mud and dust, the roof was bare cob-webbed thatch and rafter, and the furniture a rickety table, a dangerous-looking cane-bottomed settee and a leg-rest arm-chair from which some one had removed the leg-rests. Had some scoundrelly oont-wallah pinched them for fuel? (No, Damocles, an ex-Colonel of the Indian Medical Service "pinched" ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... of inundation, under the discipline of mops and brooms and scrubbing brushes; and the good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water—insomuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us, that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers like unto a duck; and some of them, he had little doubt, could the matter be examined into, would be found to have the tails of mermaids; but this I look upon to be a mere sport of fancy, or, what is ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... are waxed and webbed They fall into a dream, And when they wake the ragged robes Are ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... but went to Umisk, who lay half in the mud, whimpering and snuffling in a curious sort of way. Gently Baree nosed him, and after a moment or two Umisk got up on his webbed feet, while fully twenty or thirty beavers were making a tremendous fuss in the water near ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... Conscious of his priestly dignity and of the need of supporting it, but shaken by the minor stresses of the situation, the senseless multiplicity of forks and spoons, the bewildering restrictions by which he felt himself to be webbed about, hampered, mastered, Father Tim was as a wild bull in a net, and was even pathetic in his unavailing efforts to prove himself equal to his surroundings. He cleared his throat at intervals, with an authority that seemed to prelude something more epoch-making ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... like that of the partridge, and the other webbed like that of a goose, its peculiarity consists in mourning over adultery, and loving its master so faithfully that it dies of pity in his arms when it learns that his wife has deceived him. So that this species was ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... hollows of the bank, where their traps had been concealed. From the first the old trapper drew forth an animal about three feet in length, of a deep chestnut colour, with fine smooth glossy hair, and a broad flat tail nearly a foot long, covered with scales. Its hind feet were webbed, its small fore-paws armed with claws, and it had large, hard, sharp teeth in its somewhat blunted head. Hanging up the beaver, for such it was, to a tree, they continued the examination of ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... few bees or wasps, several lizards, and the blackberry bushes were full of ants nests, webbed as a spider's, but so close and compact as not to ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh
... rolled from the shores of morn to even: And the stars, like rafts, went down: and the moon, like a ghost-ship, driven, A feather of foam, from port to port of the cloud-built isles that dotted, With pearl and cameo, bays of the day, her canvas webbed and rotted, Lay lost in the gulf of heaven: while over her mixed and melted The beautiful children of Morn, whose bodies are opal-belted; The beautiful daughters of Dawn, who, over and under, and after The rivered radiance, wrestled; and rainbowed heaven with laughter Of ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... plumes which give the bird its altogether unique character, spring from little tubercles close to the upper edge of the shoulder or bend of the wing; they are narrow, gentle curved, and equally webbed on both sides, of a pure creamy white colour. They are about six inches long, equalling the wing, and can be raised at right angles to it, or laid along the body at the pleasure of the bird. The bill is horn colour, the legs yellow, and the iris pale olive. This striking novelty has been named by ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... cleverness, made sense at least), but he extended his hand and said "Put 'er there!" like any ladies' wear buyer at an annual convention. Ray and Farmer shook with him in turn. His hand was damp and webbed, but felt ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... the end of the feathers of its wings, which when it sits appear upon its back. When we left Louisiana, near an hundred halcyons followed our vessel for near three days: they kept at the distance of about a stone-cast, and seemed to swim, yet I could never discover that their feet were webbed, and was therefore greatly surprised. They probably live upon the small insects that drop from the outside of the vessel when sailing; for they now-and-then dived, and came up in the same place. I have some suspicion that, by keeping in the wake of the ship, they float after it ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... scarcely be classed as a dainty feeder, he makes a strong appeal to some people, especially after he has contracted an intimate alliance with sage and onions, but he was never intended by Nature for a sprinter, nor are his webbed feet adapted for rapid locomotion. Sufferers from chronic melancholia would, I am sure, benefit by witnessing the nightly football scrums and speed-contests of these Chinese ducks, for I defy any one to see them without becoming helpless ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... among the broad vine-webbed slopes of the Wurzburg, hills, the stranger said she was going to change there, and take a train on to Berlin. Mrs. March wondered whether she would be able to keep up the comedy to the last; and she had to own that she carried ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... as has been pointed out, there have been numerous attempts at flight which remain glorious failures, notably the flying fishes, which take a great leap and hold their pectoral fins taut; the Flying Tree-Toad, whose webbed fingers and toes form a parachute; the Flying Lizard (Draco volans), which has its skin pushed out on five or six greatly elongated mobile ribs; and various "flying" mammals, e.g. Flying Phalangers and Flying Squirrels, which take great swooping ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... fine, smooth, and glossy. The Indians use its incisor teeth, which are very large and hard, to cut the bone or horn with which they tip their spears. It is a rodent, or gnawing animal. It has a broad, horizontal, flattened tail, nearly of an oval form, which is covered with scales. The hind feet are webbed, and, with the aid of the tail, which acts as a rudder, enable it to swim through the water with ease and rapidity. Except in one respect, I do not know that it can be considered a sagacious animal; but it is a marvellous engineer, its faculties being employed in building houses, ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... permanent disabilities which can in most cases be controlled by the identification officer. These can be lack of fingers (born without), amputations, crippled fingers (bent, broken), deformities (webbed, ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... quite free, hinder toes webbed to the last joint; (in spirits) gray-blue, with a series of small oblong tubercles; the sides purple-brown with a white streak from the underside of the eyes to the shoulders; sides of the belly and region of the vent purplish, with small white spots; the hinder side of the thighs purple-brown, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... Swap souls with you and lead the cold sea-green Amphibians of Prohibition on, Pallid of nose and webbed of foot, ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... party around looked in the direction in which she pointed. Above their heads the soft blue sky was fading into gray, and here and there a misty star peeped out: but to the westward, where the downs and woods of Raleigh closed in with those of Abbotsham, the blue was webbed and turfed with delicate white flakes; iridescent spots, marking the path by which the sun had sunk, showed all the colors of the dying dolphin; and low on the horizon lay a long band of grassy green. But what was the sound which troubled Mrs. Leigh? None of them, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... she cried, shaking the water off her tail as she scrambled through. Phil noticed that she was as agile in the water as she was clumsy on land, and that two toes on each foot were webbed. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... into a slight convexity on its upper surface, and is covered with scales. His fore-feet are armed with nails, and serve for the purpose of hands— indeed, he vies with the monkey in the use he can make of them. The hind-feet are webbed, and with these—together with his tail, which acts as a rudder—he is enabled to swim rapidly through the water. The beaver is a rodent, with a short head and broad blunt snout, and his incisor teeth are remarkably large and hard, enabling him to bite through wood with wonderful ease and ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... material shut out the sky. Gigantic globes of cool white light shamed the pale sunbeams that filtered down through the girders and wires. Here and there a gossamer suspension bridge dotted with foot passengers flung across the chasm and the air was webbed with slender cables. A cliff of edifice hung above him, he perceived as he glanced upward, and the opposite facade was grey and dim and broken by great archings, circular perforations, balconies, buttresses, turret projections, myriads ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... wilderness of trees and dense undergrowth, which met the radiant sky somewhere where the eye could not follow. The bell-like tinkle of water out of sight was the only sound until I heard a patter-patter of webbed feet coming along the road. A flock of geese were moving homeward, followed by a woman, whose feet were as bare as theirs, and whose eyes were fixed upon her distaff and spindle. She would not have noticed me had not the birds, true to their ancient ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... struck the nearest ovals they webbed with lines which cracked wide open. Shattered bits tinkled down to the platform. There was a stir at the end of the hall where the machine stood. Figures ran into plain sight. Baldies! Ross cried out a warning as he saw those star men raise ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... have worn. It may be that the hideous face is like The idol Krishna's, from whose feasts depart, Smitten with cholera, the Hindoo devotees. The body oozes with a loathsome dew. Its head is red as if sucked full of blood; But all the rest, its hundred legs, and tail, The mailed back, and the wide-webbed prickly wings, Are green, like those base eyes of jealousy Which hope to see a covert murder done. I find the finest needle in the house, And press the point down on the slimy hide. The blunt edge crushes, does not pierce the shape, And brings the straggle ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... high llano, we shot a pair of curious birds, which looked like water-birds, but were living in a dry place and were able to run with great speed. They were of the size of a hen, and had a long beak, long legs and four flat though not webbed toes. At the end of this high llano, we passed the Hacienda of Agua Blanca, a property belonging to the jefe of Juchitan. From here, we descended rapidly over a poor road, coming out at nine onto the straight road from Tapanatepec, at this point four leagues behind us. From here on, the whole ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... the edge of his tub with webbed hands and swung his webbed, yellow-skinned feet free from the water which kept the sensitive membranes from drying, and at the same time supplied his body tissues with liquid. Falling upon all fours, like ...
— The Indulgence of Negu Mah • Robert Andrew Arthur
... outline of the swan is followed as nearly as possible. The prow rises out of the water, shaped like the bird's neck and head; the keel is rounded like the belly; the stern is an imitation of the tail; the legs are supplied by two large adjuncts in the shape of webbed feet, with the addition, however, of numerous wheels fastened round the swan's belly, which are partially immersed in the water and moved by powerful machinery within ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... they came upon a muddy shallow. And there on the bank Hugo saw his first avoset or "scooper," as Humphrey called him. The bird was resting from his labors when the two first observed him. Though the ooze was soft the bird did not sink into it. There he stood, his wide-webbed toes supporting him on the surface of the ooze, and it seemed a long way from his feet up his blue legs to his black-and-white body. But the oddest thing about him was his long, curved, and elastic bill turning up at the end. The bird had not observed them, and presently set to work ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... our venerable British of the two Isles professing a suckling attachment to an ancient port-wine, lawyer, doctor, squire, rosy admiral, city merchant, the classic scholar is he whose blood is most nuptial to the webbed bottle. The reason must be, that he is full of the old poets. He has their spirit to sing with, and the best that Time has done on earth to feed it. He may also perceive a resemblance in the wine to the studious mind, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly and swam yet further than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a waterfowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... dear boy," he replied. "It looks like the foot of a bear, and yet it appears to be webbed as if it might be that of ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... up, every eye blinked, every wing half-opened, every beak shut tight as Cob, whom everybody had thought to be miles away by that time, threw forward his wings, umbrella-fashion, flung them up, hat-fashion, fanning wide his tail, dropped his giant webbed feet, and came to anchor with a rush. Then he folded those wonderful pinions of his, foot by rustling foot, stared stonily at the amazed, mute company around him, and, throwing back his immaculate, smooth, low-browed, spotless head, laughed to the winds, hoarsely, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... dining-room was trans formed into a bed of tulips, the mantel a parterre of flowers, while the sideboard, its rear packed with the family silver, was guarded by a row of bottles of various sizes, shapes and colors; various degrees of cob webbed shabbiness, too—containing the priceless vintages which the senior member of the firm of Breen & Co. intended ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... depressions in the unbroken mass of foliage, variegated with aspiring palms so slender of shaft that their unceasing swaying in the still air seemed an act of unconscious affectation for the display of huge bunches of gaudy fruit, seductive and dulcet to the taste. Spider-webbed tree-ferns with furry, water-bespangled trunks stood in crowded groves on the brink of spray-creating cascades and along the margins of cool rivulets which murmured as they hurried to ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... better. One by one the ghoulish muzzles emerged, peered into the darkness, and were satisfied; then the clumsy, ill-balanced bodies, entangled in loose-folded leathern cerements—the noctule's wing-spread measures a full foot; lastly, the webbed curving ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... recognized him; his face did not appear often in public places, except in his own state, and, even so, it was a thoroughly ordinary face. But, as he walked, Senator John Peter Gonzales was keeping a mental, fine-webbed, four-dimensional net around him, feeling for the slightest touch of recognition. He wanted no one to connect him in any way with ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the creek—for the best of reasons. He was anything but a fast walker. In fact, one might say that he waddled, or even crawled, rather than walked. But in the water he was quite a different creature. By means of his webbed feet he could swim as easily as Mr. Crow could fly. And he could stay at the bottom of Black Creek a surprisingly long time before he came up for a breath of air. Indeed, Mr. Crow sometimes remarked that he would ...
— The Tale of Timothy Turtle • Arthur Scott Bailey
... in it, big, bonny creatures, liked and sighed over, and the house was shabby now, cracked and peeling for the want of paint, the walks grass-grown, the lawn frowzy, lank and stringy curtains at the dim windows. There were only three bottles of the historic cellar left now, precious, cob-webbed; there was only one of the blacks, an ancient, crabbed crone of the second generation, with a witch's hand at cookery and a witch's temper. And there were only James King III and James King IV, his son, Honor's Jimsy, left of the line in the old home. The negress ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... three inches deep, languidly creeping along over a bottom of sleek mud. My arrival produced a great commotion. A huge green bull-frog uttered an indignant croak, and jumped off the bank with a loud splash: his webbed feet twinkled above the surface, as he jerked them energetically upward, and I could see him ensconcing himself in the unresisting slime at the bottom, whence several large air bubbles struggled lazily to the top. Some little spotted frogs instantly followed the patriarch's ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... sank, and the outer and inward change took place, she would sit still and sorrowful, shrivelled up into the form of a frog, though the head was now much larger than that little animal's, and therefore she was uglier than ever: she looked like a miserable dwarf, with a frog's head and webbed fingers. There was something very sad in her eyes; voice she had none except a kind of croak like a child sobbing in its dreams. Then would the Viking's wife take her in her lap; she would forget the ugly form, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen |
