"Caterpillar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indicated. He appeared of a russet hue, not more distinguishable from the scene around him than the green caterpillar from the leaf it feeds on. His progress when actually walking was more rapid than Mrs. Yeobright's; but she was enabled to keep at an equable distance from him by his habit of stopping whenever he came to a brake of brambles, where he paused awhile. On coming in her ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... And saw the Queen who sat betwixt her best Enid, and lissome Vivien, of her court The wiliest and the worst; and more than this He saw not, for Sir Lancelot passing by Spied where he couched, and as the gardener's hand Picks from the colewort a green caterpillar, So from the high wall and the flowering grove Of grasses Lancelot plucked him by the heel, And cast him as a worm upon the way; But when he knew the Prince though marred with dust, He, reverencing ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... "Expedition" near Fetish Rock. The bright clear night showed us silhouettes of dark holms, high and wooded to the north, and southwards banks of papyrus outlying long straggling lines of thin islands like a huge caterpillar. The canoe-men attempted to land at one place, declaring that some king wanted "dash," but we were now too strong for them: these fellows, if allowed, will halt to speak every boat on the river. The wind fell to a dead calm, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... into females, with the result that the transplanted organs remained alive and grew, and in some cases at least became connected with the genital ducts. Even in these cases the moth when developed showed the original characters of the sex to which belonged the caterpillar from which it came, although it was carrying a gonad of the opposite sex. It will be seen that these results are the direct opposite of those obtained by Steinach on Mammals. We have no evidence that the darker colour of the normal male in this case is adaptive, or due to external ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... every nerve has to be lengthened out to suit that extra length, and that means a great deal of waste for that rebuilding, but it is something worse than that. You know perfectly well that out of the butterfly egg there comes the caterpillar, and that caterpillar goes into a cocoon, and during the life of the cocoon every organ is changed there and it comes out a butterfly. That is what we call ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... distances. All these things he averred he had himself seen, and if people asked him how they were possible, he answered simply, "I can no more explain these phenomena than I can explain the law of gravitation, or the transformation of a caterpillar into a moth. The first principles of everything are inexplicable. The difference in our surroundings is only that some things are frequently observed, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... the long Flanders hill-slope the "Here-We-Come" Regiment, of mixed American and French infantry, held a caterpillar-shaped line of trenches. ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... up the paper which had in it a fullpage photograph of a monster tank—those weird machines traveling on endless steel belts of caterpillar construction, armored, riveted and plated, with machine guns ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... social system, but dreamt of such a democracy "mewing its mighty youth" as the world had never seen. He had thought that his brains were to do their share in building up this great national imago, winged, divine, out of the clumsy, crawling, snobbish, comfort-loving caterpillar of Victorian England. With such dreams his life had started, and the light of them, perhaps, had helped him to his rapid success. And then his wife had died, and he had married again and become somehow ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... gentleman with the diamond,) Ma'am Allen tried to peek into it one day when she left it on the sideboard. "If you please," says she,—'n' took it from him, 'n' gave him a look that made him curl up like a caterpillar on a hot shovel. I only wished he hadn't, and had jest given her a little saas, for I've been takin' boxin'-lessons, 'n' I've got a new way of counterin' I want to try ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... powerful ones; he is as the winter worm, as the crocodile in the slime of his sleep by the bank, as the sick eagle before moulting. But I say, O King, that he will come forth like the serpent in a new skin, shaming the old one; he slept a caterpillar, and will come forth a butterfly; he sank a star, and lo! he riseth ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... evolution is the continuity of life from body to body. The butterfly is frequently used as an illustration, but the principle holds with all the higher order of insects like ants, flies and bees. In the metamorphosis of the caterpillar we have a phenomenon so common that most people have personally observed it. Watch, in imagination, its transformation that contradicts materialistic philosophy. The worm is a physical body occupied by an evolving life or intelligence. Its physical body perishes and becomes part of the dust of ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... now there are two of her yonder beneath the spider-nest—and was, moreover, an old friend, whose ways were perfectly familiar to me; but this time the insect engaged my particular attention because it was not alone, being accompanied by a green caterpillar bigger than herself, which she held beneath her body as she travelled along on the window-sill so near my face. "So, so! my little wren-wasp, you have found a satisfactory cranny at last, and have made yourself at home. I have seen you prying about ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... like a caterpillar," he said, recalling the time when his father had given him the pony; he was a boy then, and the pony was as much to him, it went through his mind, as Alice had ever been. Was it all a jest, an ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a prominent figure in Bushman mythology; the mantis and the caterpillar, Ngo, are his incarnations. It was called the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... go away! How you do worry, jumping and dancing about! And what a stupid, good-for-nothing leaf you've brought! Fetch me one that's not completely riddled with caterpillar holes." ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... less ardently, and so more ineffectively in his will and imagination to image God. In the reverent study of insect and animal life we gain some hint of what we have been and what we may become—something corresponding to the grub, a burrowing thing; to the caterpillar, a crawling thing; and finally to the butterfly, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... caterpillar, called ver-palmiste is found in the heads of cabbage-palms,—especially after the cabbage has been cut out, and the tree has begun to perish. It is the grub of a curious beetle, which has a proboscis of such form as suggested the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... those boys as if you were their nursery governess!" remarked Lilias one day, just a little nettled that Clifford ran instinctively to Carmel for sympathy instead of to his sister. "I promised to help them with those caterpillar boxes to-morrow, and so I will, if you'll leave them. I ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... in order—still slim, though of a slightly more robust habit of body—has acquired the art of spinning (caterpillar-like) a cocoon, and of causing to adhere to the exterior thereof grains of sand and minute chips of shell. Though this vestlet is very frail and though the sandy outer coat is liable to drop off (when it collapses altogether), it seems to me to indicate ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... answered. "Don't you know that all animals are protected by their peculiar markings that render them invisible? The caterpillar looks like the leaf it eats from; the scales of the fish counterfeit the glistening water of the brook; the bear and the 'possum are coloured like the tree-trunks on which they climb. There!" I added, as I concluded my task. "I ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... mouth apparent, motion of head like a caterpillar's when touched, shape cylindrical, body ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... vastatrix. According to Dr. Plonquet of Ay they are already the prey of no less than fifteen varieties of insects, which feed upon the leaves, stalks, roots, or fruit of the vines. Between 1850 and 1860 the vineyards of Ay were devastated by the pyrale, a species of caterpillar, which feeds on the young leaves and shoots until the vine is left completely bare. The insect eventually becomes transformed into a small white butterfly, and deposits its eggs either in the crevices of the stakes or in the stalks of the vine. ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... expectations—a green and white gown, with long, tight sleeves, a green silk handkerchief round her neck and crossed in front, a green parasol, and green gloves. It was strange enough to see this verdant caterpillar turn out of a road-waggon, and gracefully shake herself free from the bits of straw and fluff which would usually gather on the raiment of the ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... photograph (from A. F. Blakeslee), shows beans rolling down an inclined plane and accumulating in compartments at the base which are closed in front by glass. The exposure was long enough to cause the moving beans to appear as caterpillar-like objects hopping along the board. Assuming that the irregularity of shape of the beans is such that each may make jumps toward the right or toward the left, in rolling down the board, the laws of chance lead to ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... check. But at the mouth of each of those drains, if we can get our flies in, and keep ourselves unseen, we will have one cast at least. For at each of them, in some sharp-rippling spot, lies a great trout or two, waiting for beetle, caterpillar, and whatsoever else may be washed from among the long grass above. Thence, and from brimming feeders, which slip along, weed-choked, under white hawthorn hedges, and beneath the great roots of oak and elm, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... sure," the invalid continued, elongating and contracting herself, caterpillar-like,' "he said 's he ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... scampered quickly forward, scrambling nimbly upward to the lower limbs. Here he would squat for a moment or two, quite proud of his achievement, then clamber to the ground again and repeat. Sometimes, quite often in fact, for he was an ape, his attention was distracted by other things, a beetle, a caterpillar, a tiny field mouse, and off he would go in pursuit; the caterpillars he always caught, and sometimes the beetles; but the field ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the drawing-room and they went to the dining-room together. The smell of eggs and bacon and coffee greeted them and Mr. Anderson forgot all about the Indian beggar when he took his seat. But he received a rude shock. There was a big live caterpillar in the fish. Mr. Anderson called the servant and ordered him to take away the fish and serve with eyes open the next time. The servant who had been in Mr. Anderson's service a long time stared open-mouthed. Only a ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... lately observed a curious fact, which I have never seen noticed in any book which has fallen in my way, viz. that it is the tail of the caterpillar which becomes the head of the butterfly. I found it hard to believe till I had convinced myself of it in a number of instances. The caterpillar weaves its web from its mouth, finishes with the head downwards, and the head, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... the humblest and least agreeable of nature's performances; his Novum Organum was able to take up the smallest conceivable atom of existence, whether animate or not, and make a study of it. He has no disrespect for caterpillars or any kind of worm or insect; but he is not a caterpillar himself, or an insect of any kind, or a Saurian, or an Icthyosaurian, but a man; and it was for the sake of building up from a new basis a practical doctrine of human life, that he invented that instrument, and put so much fine work ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... with thy butterfly wings in thy light summer garment, thou that hoverest aloft, and flittest over the mountains, and sweepest along the earth! from the airy changeling of the caterpillar, up or down to the lion and to man, ye all of you, fostering a brief momentary spark in you, like the glance from the flint and steel ... gone is the red bubbling up of the spark ... and again a mere slough is lying before us, after its short dream of life and love, dust upon ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... didn't want the other caterpillar to see the moth's wing, you know; so what must he do but t'y to carry it with all his left legs, and he t'ied to walk on the other set. Of course, he toppled over ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... then his eyes fell upon a good-sized, greenish-hued caterpillar which had dropped from a willow branch into ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... climbed upon the table, had rolled herself into some mosquito netting, like a caterpillar in a cocoon. They were all so much interested, that grandma, in the kindness of her heart, did ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... getting us all dolled up for a sacrifice of some kind." Nelson's heart began to pound at the thought. Then he fought for self control. It must be a hideously realistic nightmare! He, Victor Nelson, American citizen, a quiet birdman, member of the Caterpillar Club and ex-flight commander of the A. E. F. was about to be offered as a sacrifice to some hideous, pagan god? Nonsense! He'd wake up in a minute and hear the drone of a ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... double-faced frames attached to the top of this case. The more important insects included in this group were the following: Sugar maple borer, elm snout beetles, twig girdler or twig pruner, white marked tussock moth, gypsy moth, brown tail moth, bag worm, forest tent caterpillar, elm leaf beetle, oyster scale, scurfy bark louse, San Jose scale, elm bark louse, cottony maple scale. One plate was devoted to characteristic insects affecting oak, and another to those depredating ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... nowhere. That strength of yours, O Maruts, that greatness extended as far as the sun extends its daily course, when you, like your deer on their march, went down to the western mountain with untouched splendor. Your host, O Maruts, shone forth when, O sages, you strip, like a caterpillar, the waving tree. Conduct then, O friends, our service to a good end, as the eye conducts the man in walking. That man, O Maruts, is not overpowered, he is not killed, he does not fail, he does not shake, he does not drop, his goods do not perish, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... laughter had subsided, "we must ask what is meant by 'protecting his own existence.' Frankly, we've been driven frantic by that one. The little humanoid, caterpillar-track mechanism that we all tend to think of as Snookums isn't really Snookums, any more than a human being is a hand or an eye. Snookums wouldn't actually be threatening his own existence unless his brain—now in the hold of the ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... dots mingle with the ant-heaps on the plain, or are lost in the folds of the grey prairie, a pillar of dust rises from the centre of the fan. A larger mass of brown—the battery and its escort—a great kharki caterpillar creeping across the grey,—it is time to be moving, the last mule-waggon has topped the nek, and the last of the rear-guard are leading their ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... hand, it is not a little strange that Aristotle has very little indeed to tell us about the far more obvious phenomena of the life-history of the butterfly, and of the several kinds of butterflies and moths. He does tell us briefly that the butterfly comes from a caterpillar, which lives on cabbage-leaves and feeds voraciously, then turns into a chrysalis and eats no more, nor has it a mouth to eat withal; it is hard and, as it were, dead, but yet it moves and wriggles when you touch it, and after a while the husk bursts and out comes the butterfly. The ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Merrilies, with a nose as black as Topsy's; and is herself every bit as game and queer as that delicious imp of darkness and of Mrs. Stowe. Her legs set her long slim body about two inches and a half from the ground, making her very like a huge caterpillar or hairy oobit—her two eyes, dark and full, and her shining nose, being all of her that seems anything but hair. Her tail was a sort of stump, in size and in look very much like a spare foreleg, stuck in anywhere to be near. Her color was black ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... next day, which wandered like an erratic caterpillar along the backbone of the Cape, she began to wonder if, after all, she was displaying that judgment which daddy-professor praised so highly. It was too early in the season for the "millionaire's special" to be scheduled, in which those ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... The Processional caterpillar of the pine-trees, "endowed with an exquisite hygrometric sensibility," is a barometer more infallible than that of the physicists. "It foresees the tempests preparing afar, at enormous distances, almost in the other hemisphere," and announces them several days before ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... memory on one side, and confining ourselves to the fact of memory only, a caterpillar on being just hatched is supposed, according to this theory, to lose its memory of the time it was in the egg, and to be stimulated by an intense but unconscious recollection of the action taken by its ancestors when they were first ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... where reposed an enormous iron tobacco-box, endowed, like the shield of Achilles, with supernatural powers, doubtless from bearing the portrait of the blessed St. Nicholas. Peter Stuyvesant turned like an angry bear upon the foe, and seizing him, as he fled, by an immeasurable queue, 'Ah, whoreson caterpillar,' roared he, 'here's what shall make worms' meat of thee!' so saying he whirled his sword and dealt a blow that would have decapitated the varlet, but that the pitying steel struck short and shaved the queue forever from his crown. At this moment an arquebusier leveled ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... it with relish, meticulously, that not one grain was lost upon his white caterpillar moustache, ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... of windy March The catkins drop down, Curly, caterpillar-like, Curious green and brown. 20 With concourse of nest-building birds And leaf-buds by the way, We begin to think of flowers And ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... the rounds, she could see symptoms of measles in everything the children did or didn't do; or that well-known habit of hers, that even the children laughed about with her, of feeling things crawling all over her for hours after she had seen a caterpillar. Well, that was only the other side of her extraordinary sensitiveness, that made her know how everybody was feeling, and what to do to make him feel better. She had often said that she would certainly die if she ever ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... enemy to agriculture made its appearance in this month. A destructive grub-worm was discovered in several parts of the cultivated ground; and at the Hawkesbury a caterpillar had commenced its ravages wherever it found any young grain just shooting out of the earth. This occasioned some delay in sowing ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... B. Williams, of Salem, Mass., presented the "National Institute" with an insect from New Zealand, with the following description: "'The Hotte, a decided caterpillar, or worm, is found gnawing at the root of the Rota tree, with a plant growing out of its head. This most peculiar and extraordinary insect travels up both the Rota and Ferriri trees, and entering into the top, eats its way, perforating the trunk ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in Natural History (Vol. iii., p. 166.).—There is a parallel to the curious fact contributed by your Brazilian correspondent in the "vegetable caterpillar" of New Zealand. This natural rarity is described in Angas's Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand, vol. i. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... quite right. He felt that there ought to be a fish there waiting for some big fat caterpillar or fly to drop from the leaves above; and his ugly lure had hardly touched the surface of the water before there was a loud smack, a disturbance as if a stone had been thrown in to fall without a splash, and a well-hooked trout was darting ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... accomplish a desired end, a fast and the united storming of heaven, never failed to bring victory to the besiegers. Thus Winthrop writes: "Great harm was done in corn, (especially wheat and barley) in this month, by a caterpillar, like a black worm about an inch and a half long. They eat up first the blades of the stalk, then they eat up the tassels, whereupon the ear withered. It was believed by divers good observers, that they fell in a great thunder ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... of the caterpillar and the horseman was conceived in arrogance, but it was pretty and effective. Every tory intellect on earth is pleased to discourse in that way of the labors of the only men who greatly help their ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... a worm, is all unfit to live!" says one of the old poet-philosophers. And are worms therefore never to be trodden upon? Not so, by any means! The adverbial adjective "needlessly" explains the broad distinction. Not one worm, even the creeping, crawling and disgusting caterpillar, for cruelty or even for neglect: millions of worms, whether caterpillar or human worm of the dust, for a sacred cause and a ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... plain that a good many of the windows have also been built in, and, to obliterate all trace of them, the whole wall has been whitewashed. All round about many fruit-trees seem to have been rooted up, and for three years running, the caterpillar-host has fallen upon the remnant; nobody looks after them, and they are left to perish one by one, consumed ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... fresh from the foundry, drawn by big caterpillar tractors, were all proceeding in one direction—toward the Somme. Villages along their route were filling with troops. The nearer the front you went, the greater the concentration of men and material. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... last metamorphosis, which, in most of them, takes place shortly before their death. Each of these transformations is designated by so many terms, that it may not be useless to observe to the reader, who has not previously paid attention to the subject, that larva, caterpillar, grub, maggot, or worm, is the first state of the insect on issuing from the egg; that pupa, aurelia, chrysalis, or nympha are the names by which the second metamorphosis is designated, and that the last stage, when the insect assumes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... think the "worm" described by Maggie P. B. is the caterpillar of the willow sphinx moth. I have found several of them on the willow-trees, and I kept them and fed them every day. In the fall they turned into chrysalides, which I kept all the winter. In the spring beautiful moths, nearly six inches across ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... extremities. They bend, and wave, and nod, but never curl. It is in disease, or in death, by blight, or frost, or poison only, that leaves in general assume this ingathered form. It is the flame of autumn that has shrivelled them, or the web of the caterpillar that has bound them: and thus the last forms of the Venetian leafage set forth the fate of Venetian pride; and, in their utmost luxuriance and abandonment, perish ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... close to us what I took to be a seed-pod of some aerial plant, hanging straight down from a bough, at about six feet from the ground. On going up to it, I found to my surprise that it was a cocoon about the size of a sparrow's egg, woven by a caterpillar in broad meshes of a rose-coloured silky substance. It hung, suspended from the tip of an outstanding leaf, by a strong silken thread about six inches in length. On examining it carefully, I found that the glossy threads which surrounded it were thick and strong. Both above ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... his hand into his pocket and produced . . . a caterpillar, a furry, squirming caterpillar. Marilla saw and clutched at him but she was too late. Davy dropped the ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... godly fear flows from our receiving of an answer of prayer, when we supplicated for mercy at the hand of God. See the proof for this—"If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, blasting, mildew, locust, or if there be caterpillar; if their enemy besiege them in the land of their cities, whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness there be: what prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the work of education, I shall not refer them to Dr. Weismann's original treatise, as well translated and still further enlarged by Mr. Raphael Meldola, but will present them instead with a brief resume, boiled down and condensed into a patent royal elixir of learning. Your caterpillar, then, runs many serious risks in early life from the annoying persistence of sundry evil-disposed birds, who insist at inconvenient times in picking him off the leaves of gooseberry bushes and other his chosen places of residence. ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... popular with us as in England. They are stronger and coarser-growing plants than the red and white species, and do not require as high culture. They can be grown to advantage in tree form, as they are quite exempt from insect enemies. The tent caterpillar is the only one that I have seen injuring them. They also require much less pruning, since the best fruit is borne on the young wood of the previous year's growth. If they are grown as bushes, they ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... bites, stings, or bruises; every second of your existence you are wounded by some piece of animal life that nobody has over seen before, except Swammerdam and Meriam. An insect with eleven legs is swimming in your teacup, a nondescript with nine wings is struggling in the small beer, or a caterpillar with several dozen eyes in his belly is hastening over the bread and butter! All nature is alive, and seems to be gathering all her entomological hosts to eat you up, as you are standing, out of your coat, waistcoat, and breeches. Such are the tropics. All this reconciles ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... Zeuzera aesculus.—The caterpillar feeds on the wood of apple trees, but the moth is often found in great abundance in St. James's Park; sixty were gathered there in one morning, but the greater number had been half devoured by ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... sitting reading aloud to grandmamma in the garden when from the trees above there fell upon my neck, which was bare, a fat, hairy caterpillar. I recollect I gave a gurgling, nasty ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... soon be a dull place. I wish we could leave it for a change," said Ayrault. "I don't mean forever, of course, but just as people have grown tired of remaining like plants in the places in which they grew. Alan has been a caterpillar for untold ages; can he not become the butterfly?" "Since we have found out how to straighten the axis," said Deepwaters, "might we not go one better, and improve the orbit as well?—increase the difference between aphelion and perihelion, and give those that still like ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... brown hands, as he sat down at the table. "I don't know why it is, but the present generation has a marvelous way of skimming around any kind of work with their hands. They'll work their brains till they haven't got any more backbone than a caterpillar, but as for manual labor, it's old-timey and out of fashion. I wonder how these farms would ever have been carved out of the backwoods, if the old Puritans had sat down on the rocks with their noses in a lot of books, and tried to figure out just how little work ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... Indian, but many indigenous insects, birds, and quadrupeds, welcomed the apple-tree to these shores. The tent-caterpillar saddled her eggs on the very first twig that was formed, and it has since shared her affections with the wild cherry; and the canker-worm also in a measure abandoned the elm to feed on it. As it grew apace, the ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... slender wrists under turned-up sleeves, busy with a small distilling apparatus, made of silver. He did not see the lady's face, and she, too, did not appear to see him. But when he noticed that her dress was green and yellow, he knew at once that she was a sorceress, for the caterpillar of the hawk-moth is green and yellow, and it, too, knows how to bewitch the eye. The lower end of its body looks as if it were its head and has a horn like a unicorn, so that it frightens away its enemies with its mock face, while it feeds ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... distance from the coast. If such be the case, the object of these animals occasionally going out to sea is explained. The stomach contained nothing but the sea-weed. Mr. Baynoe, however, found a piece of crab in one; but this might have got in accidentally, in the same manner as I have seen a caterpillar, in the midst of some lichen, in the paunch of a tortoise. The intestines were large, as in other herbivorous animals. The nature of this lizard's food, as well as the structure of its tail and feet, and the fact of its having been seen voluntarily swimming out at sea, absolutely prove its aquatic ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... man did not answer; he had begun an anecdote, and in his broad expanse of face his tiny mouth writhed like a caterpillar. The anecdote was humorous. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that you are large growers of orchids; am I right in supposing that in their growth or production you are much troubled with some insect or caterpillar which retards or hinders their arrival at maturity, and that these insects or caterpillars can be destroyed by small snakes? I have tracts of land under my occupation, and if these small snakes can be of use in your culture of orchids ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... eat 'is breakfuss because of a pig that was being killed in the yard, and it was no good pointing out to 'im that the pig was on'y making a fuss about it because it was its nature so to do. He lived on wegetables and such like, and the way 'e carried on one day over 'arf a biled caterpillar 'e found in his cabbage wouldn't be believed. He wouldn't eat another mossel, but sat hunting 'igh and low for ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... are truly the work of a friend. They are not the blasting depredations of a canker-toothed, caterpillar critic; nor are they the fair statement of cold impartiality, balancing with unfeeling exactitude the pro and con of an author's merits; they are the judicious observations of animated friendship, selecting the beauties of the piece. I ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... was a head!!! It swayed back and forth, like the head of a huge caterpillar, and every gun fired in unison. Shot after shot pumped into the head with rapid and ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... proprietor must have been difficult to please, if he were not satisfied, for the artist had filled every inch of space—there was scarcely room to have added a caterpillar. In spite, however, of this attractive exterior, the hotel did not prosper—it was never more than half full, though it was large and comfortable. Unfortunately, from its proximity to the Pre-aux-Clercs, it was frequented by so many persons ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... imperishable, the immortal army of American volunteers. These gallant spirits now lie in untimely sepulcher. No more will they respond to the fierce blast of the bugle or the call to arms. But let us believe that they are not dead, but sleeping! Look at the patient caterpillar as he crawls on the ground, liable to be crushed by every careless foot that passes. He heeds no menace, and turns from no dangers. Regardless of circumstances, he treads his daily round, avoided by the little child sporting upon the sward. He has work, earnest work, to ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... yourself: A slim figure, if you like, held in the posture of the caterpillar slouch, a long length of stocking so thin as to give the effect of shaded skin above high-heeled slippers with sparkling buckles of bright jet, a short skirt, a scrappy, thin, low-necked, short-sleeved ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... CATERPILLAR. A nick name for a soldier. In the year 1745, a soldier quartered at a house near Derby, was desired by his landlord to call upon him, whenever he came that way; for, added he, soldiers are the pillars of the nation. The rebellion being finished, it happened the same regiment was quartered in Derbyshire, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... a little foreign twang to the words. Immediately the bear began to twist like a caterpillar upon the limb, he extended his hind-legs towards the trunk, he seized it with his fore-paws. He began ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... what you did?" he cried. "You brought me the wrong picture. And Dusty Moth has gone shrieking off into the darkness, he was so disappointed. This is not Betsy Butterfly's picture! It's some dreadful-looking caterpillar. And when I glanced at it just now, over in the orchard, it sent ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... afternoon on the piazza, and he was dozing comfortably when Jocko swung down from the grape-vine by his long tail, and tickled the old gentleman on the nose with a straw. Grandpa sneezed, and opened one eye to brush away the fly as he supposed. Then he went to sleep again, and Jocko dropped a caterpillar on his bald head; this made him open the other eye to see what that soft, creepy thing could be. Neddy couldn't help laughing, for he often wanted to do just such things, but never dared, because grandpa was a very stern old gentleman, and no one ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... remember that you never were any fun, as a girl, Dora," observed Mr. Lockwood, at the supper table that night, when his sister uttered her usual criticisms of the twins' conduct. "You squealed if you came across a caterpillar, and a garter snake sent you into spasms, and it tired you to walk half ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... at this pretty clump of grass, with a bramble trailing over it and a bunch of primroses growing near. You would hardly have found the nest, so well hidden, unless you had known it must be there. It is a robin's, and the mother is bringing a caterpillar for her little family. Which of the three gaping yellow mouths will get the delicious morsel? Quite near is a wren's nest in some ivy, and so neatly is the nest made of moss woven together that there is only one tiny little hole left for the heads of the little wrens to peep out. The ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... being in segments, and either smooth or covered with short bristly hair. They spend nearly all their time in eating, and do immense damage to the foliage of trees and vegetables and to fruit. The adult is a moth or caterpillar. This class is among ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... has man learned the secret, of the caterpillar's silken spinning. Talking of caterpillars, you may, or may not, ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Achilles, with supernatural powers, doubtless from bearing the portrait of the blessed Saint Nicholas. Peter Stuyvesant turned like an angry bear upon the foe, and seizing him as he fled by an immeasurable queue, "Ah, caterpillar!" roared he, "here's what shall make worm's meat of thee!" So saying, he whirled his sword and dealt a blow that would have decapitated the varlet, but that the pitying steel struck short and shaved the queue forever from his crown. At this moment an arquebusier levelled ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... studi'd only then To honour not her selfe, but worthy men. These vertues now are banisht out of towne, Our Civill Wars have lost the civicke crowne. He highest builds, who with most art destroys, And against others fame his owne employs. I see the envious caterpillar sit On the faire blossome of each growing wit. The ayre's already tainted with the swarms Of insects, which against you rise in arms. Word-peckers, paper-rats, book-scorpions, Of wit corrupted the unfashion'd sons. The barbed censurers begin to looke Like ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... To see a caterpillar in a dream, denotes that low and hypocritical people are in your immediate future, and you will do well to keep clear of deceitful appearances. You may suffer a loss ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... ducked precipitately and a flapping, four-buckled overshoe, a relic of the winter gone, hurtled past his head and landed with considerable force upon the unsuspecting stomach of Cal, stretched luxuriously upon his bunk. Cal doubled like a threatened caterpillar and groaned, and Weary, feeling that justice had not been defeated even though he had aimed at another ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... crawling up on the porch to get out of the wet. The robins, bluebirds, cat-birds, woodpeckers, blackbirds, and others are here. This spring some of the gulls from the great lakes were fishing on the river. In YOUNG PEOPLE No. 24 Arthur L. H. wrote about his caterpillar that turned into a butterfly, and I thought he might like to hear about ours. My brother found a caterpillar that had different-colored cross-bands on it, like a Roman sash. He brought it home, and we fed it on leaves till it made ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... know the Woolly-bear Caterpillar? It is divided into three parts; the middle one brown, the two ends black. Everyone notices the Woolly-bear, because it comes out in early spring, as soon as the frost is over, and crawls on the fences ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... would not for worlds scare the poor little prisoners who cheer his lonely hours, and who have long since ceased to fear him. A turtle-dove takes peas, and a hedge-sparrow picks ants' eggs from his lips; a white-throat perches on his left hand to snatch a caterpillar from his right. The huge man was in his garden soon after sunrise gathering the dewy leaves for his feathered pets. But he talks and plays longest with the starling which his lost wife gave him. She ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... remember," said Herbert, "the day that I was going to tread upon what I thought was a little bit of black stick, and she desired me not to do it, and I did not, and afterwards I found out that it was a caterpillar;—ever since that day I have been more ready, you know," continued he, turning to Mad. de Rosier, "to believe that you might be in the right, and to do as you bid me—you don't think me obstinate, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... I were at Brantwood again, now, and could send you my wasp book! It is pathetic, and yet so dreadful,—the wasp bringing in the caterpillar for its young wasp, stinging each enough to paralyze but not to kill, and so laying them up ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... wouldn't believe it on any one's statement. That is the discouraging thing about this whole business; you can't convince any one by any amount of evidence. A man will stand out against Zoellner, Crookes, Lodge, and Myers, discounting all the rest of the great investigators, and then crumple up like a caterpillar at the first touch of The Invisible Hand when it comes to him directly. This same young man gave me the most convincing demonstrations of materialized forms I have ever seen. In his own little home, under the simplest conditions, he commanded forth from ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... faith altogether. They must have something tangible to cling to— for instance,"—and he pressed the tips of his fingers delicately together, "there are grades of intelligence just as there are grades of creation; you cannot instruct a caterpillar as you instruct a man. Now there are many human beings who are of the caterpillar quality of brain—what are you to do with them? They would not understand God as manifested in the solar system, but they would try to please some favourite ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... master. scion; sap, seedling; tendril, olive branch, nestling, chicken, larva, chrysalis, tadpole, whelp, cub, pullet, fry, callow; codlin, codling; foetus, calf, colt, pup, foal, kitten; lamb, lambkin^; aurelia^, caterpillar, cocoon, nymph, nympha^, orphan, pupa, staddle^. girl; lass, lassie; wench, miss, damsel, demoiselle; maid, maiden; virgin; hoyden. Adj. infantine^, infantile; puerile; boyish, girlish, childish, babyish, kittenish; baby; newborn, unfledged, new-fledged, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... one, Thou formest each for life's enjoyments, And, like a mother, all thy children dear, Blessest with that sweet heritage,—a home The swallow builds the cornice round, Unconscious of the beauties She plasters up. The caterpillar spins around the bough, To make her brood a winter house; And thou dost patch, between antiquity's Most glorious relics, For thy mean use, Oh man, a humble cot,— Enjoyest e'en mid tombs!— ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... on each Oak-bud wound the wormy galls, With pigmy spears, or crush the venom'd balls; Fright the green Locust from his foamy bed, Unweave the Caterpillar's gluey thread; 495 Chase the fierce Earwig, scare the bloated Toad, Arrest the snail upon his slimy road; Arm with sharp thorns the Sweet-brier's tender wood, And dash the Cynips from her damask bud; Steep in ambrosial dews the Woodbine's bells, 500 And drive ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... the mind of man by causelessly representing death as an evil in itself, which, if it be considered as a crisis, or phenomenal change, incident to a progressive being, ought as little to be thought so, as the casting of the caterpillar's skin to make room for the wings of the butterfly. It is the unveiling ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... of the sidewall of the Shed. In shape, its upper part was like the top half of a loaf of bread. In motion, here, it rested on some sort of wheeled vehicle, and it was reared up like an indignant caterpillar, and a blue-white flame squirted out of its tail, with coy and frolicsome flirtings from ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... will let him live! That toleration which spares the caterpillar shall be extended to him! Men shall look on him in wonder, and, shrugging their shoulders, admire the wise dispensation of Providence, which can feed its creatures with husks and scourings; which spreads the table for the raven on the gallows, and for ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... at home, I think, if I was silly enough to be afraid of a harmless caterpillar like that," Fanny had said, as with her own hands she took from Lucy's curls and threw away a thousand-legged thing, the very sight of which made poor Lucy shiver but did not send ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... has a pet aversion of some sort. I have heard people shriek at the sight of a caterpillar, and turn pale in the neighborhood of a toad. My great antipathy is a spider! Not that I object to its treatment of flies—nasty little worries, they deserve everything that happens to them. But it is the appearance of a spider that is so against it. There is a shifty expression about the eye, ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... over the imitation of them when we replaced the hideous old tables, and how exquisite we thought the initial I, which irreverent youngsters have likened, with some justice, to an enormous overfed caterpillar, enwreathed with red and ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it becomes a large worm or caterpillar of a yellowish white color, (which is its first state;) this caterpillar feeds on the leaves of the mulberry tree, till, arriving at maturity, it winds itself up in a silken bag or case, called a ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... shoulders, while to the lower part of his body were attached the tail and flukes of a shark. To conceal these monstrous appendages he wore over his shoulders a kihei of kapa and allowed himself to be seen only while in the sitting posture. He sometimes took the form of a worm, a moth, a caterpillar, or a butterfly to escape the hands of his enemies. On land he generally appeared as a man squatting, after the manner of a Hawaiian gardener while ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... good look at her. Divining with a child's quick instinct that the princess was in trouble, Ruth flew into the porch, caught up her latest and dearest treasure, and presented it as a sure consolation, with such sweet good-will, that Bella could not refuse, although it was only a fuzzy caterpillar in ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... the only solution is, that he may have once lived there; but as his will, still extant, is dated in another street, and as several of the pictures he painted could not be contained in the rooms we were in, we must conclude that, like the shell which encloses the caterpillar, it was only a temporary abode for the winged genius to whom art owes so much of ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... time. The powerful lungs of Humphreys enabled him to thunder out, that the time was now past when he cared for the Doctor, that he knew he was as good as he, would do as he liked, and ere long meant to shew him he had the best right to the glebe, where he would no longer moil and toil for a caterpillar, that fattened on his labours. The shrill pipe of Davies issuing from his meagre form in a still higher key, insisted that the covenant was our only defence against malignant men, and evil counsellors, Arminians and Jesuits, and that if this godly bond was trampled on, the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... better ask Wallace." My difficulty is, why are caterpillars sometimes so beautifully and artistically coloured? Seeing that many are coloured to escape danger, I can hardly attribute their bright colour in other cases to mere physical conditions. Bates says the most gaudy caterpillar he ever saw in Amazonia (of a sphinx) was conspicuous at the distance of yards, from its black and red colours, whilst feeding on large green leaves. If any one objected to male butterflies having been made beautiful by sexual selection, and asked why should ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... spread dry grass, &c., over the surface intended to be cultivated, and to burn the litter immediately before the sowing. The heat and smoke produced has been found perfectly efficacious against the turnip-fly in England. To destroy the caterpillar, slacked lime dusted over the leaves, while the dew is upon them, is an effectual application. The white ants may be driven away or destroyed by frequent hoeings, which is the best preventive of the scorching, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the controls of the handling robots. On the screen, a machine rolled in on caterpillar treads, picked up the lux case and its contents, and carried ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... as he needed, and also let him have the heavy timbers from the old mill, as he needed them for some shoring he had to do, he would be willing to tear down the old mill, dig our ditch, build us a new dam and a new road, using his caterpillar ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... snow deep on the ground and the roads but recently cleared with snow plows and caterpillar tractors. We traveled by auto to Mammoth Hot Springs and paid our respects to Superintendent Albright, and ultimately settled in a vacant ranger's cabin near the Canyon. Here we awaited the coming of ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... Midges, (Spring and Autumn excepted), have a decided advantage in general over dubbed or hackle winged flies. In small brooks after a flood, winged flies often kill well, those with Orange, Black, Crimson, and Yellow bodies are the best. Grass Hoppers, the Cabbage Caterpillar, the Breccan or Fern Clock, will all take Trout; but as there are other natural baits to be had at the time these are in season, which I have noted, and which are more to be depended upon, I have not given any special instructions ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... by a powerful tug, which, in front of her, looked like a caterpillar, came slowly and majestically out of the harbor. And the good people of Havre, who crowded the piers, the beach, and the windows, carried away by a burst of patriotic enthusiasm, cried: "Vive la Lorraine!" with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... John, and personally had little expectation of anything coming of it. Moreover, the night air was chilly. If he could get that cloak from John now! He crawled in to try, but big John was rolled up like a caterpillar. It was warmer inside there than out, anyway. And he could keep watch there just as well as outside; so he propped himself up alongside John, and braced his mind ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... a plant which has its seeds come on the back of the leaf, and no flower; and it comes up curled like a caterpillar. Aren't ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... weather we had the day before yesterday! Who would have thought that a storm on the lake would have caused all this mist? Now one must fold up its wings and crawl about like a wretched caterpillar.' ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... situation like hers, must have been the strongest and most durable necessities. Alfieri, on the other hand, sick of his past life, mortally afraid of falling once more under the tyranny of his baser nature, seeking on all sides assistance in that terrible struggle of the winged intellect out of the caterpillar cocoon in which it had lain torpid so long, was wrought up, if ever a man was, to the pitch of enjoying, of desiring a mere intellectual passion just in proportion as it was absolutely ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... went he forth, "was he that, if he thought he had hurt the feelings of a caterpillar, should have risen from his warm bed the sharpest night in winter to go and pray his pardon of his bare knees. God assoil him, loving and gentle soul! He was all unfit for this rough world. And the dust that Sir Roger cast up at his horse-heels was in my Lord ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her shoulder, back, arm, chair to the ground. Lynch lifts the curled caterpillar on his wand. She snakes her neck, nestling. Stephen glances behind at the squatted figure with its cap back ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... getting a chance. If I'm offal, let a wise man come and tell me, for I've never heard it yet. And in point of business, I'm not a class of goods to be in danger. If anybody takes to rolling me, I can pack myself up like a caterpillar, and find my feet when I'm let alone. And though, as I may say, you're taking some of our good works from us, which is property bearing interest, I'm not saying but we can afford that, though my mother and my wife had the good will to wish and do for Mordecai to the last; and a Jew must not ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Galland's, or anywhere, in the melancholy old phaeton-buggy, behind the fat old nag whose coat was as shabby as the coat of the master or as the top and the side curtains of the sorrowful vehicle it drew along at caterpillar pace. ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... and 'live', i.e. a 'human' life. It would become incompatible with his organization, or rather it would 'transmute' it, and the process of that transmutation to the senses of other men would be called 'death'.—Even as to caterpillars; in all probability the caterpillar dies, and he either does not see, which is most probable, or at all events he does not see the connection between the caterpillar and the butterfly, the beautiful Psyche ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... his insinuating address, and displayed a set of teeth that rivalled crimped skate in their whiteness—a month afterwards they became man and wife. For some years they toiled on together—he, like a caterpillar, getting a living out of cabbages, and she, like an undertaker, out of departed soles! Latterly, however, Jack discovered that his spouse was rather addicted to 'summut short,' in fact, that she drank like a fish, although the beverage she affected was a leetle stronger than water. ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour |
