"Scaly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see the shaggy ant-bear tearing at the cones of sand-clay, and licking up the white termites; or we may behold the scaly armadillo crawling over the sun-parched earth, and rolling itself up at the approach of danger. We may see human-like forms,—the quadrumana—clinging among the high branches, and leaping from tree to tree, like birds upon the wing; we may see them of many shapes, sizes, and colours, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... setting hens. Now over the rim of each nest was stretched a black, white, yellow or gray head, pop-eyed with alarm and reproach. They were emitting a chorus of indignant squawks, all save a large, motherly old dominick in the middle barrel who was craning her scaly old neck far over toward the perturbed young sister and giving forth a series of ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... thing before him for what it was. Shocking in its gigantic size, more so in the concentrated venom of its gaze, it was the flabby, scaly and crusted whiteness of the thing that filled his being with a deadly nausea. He stared with a sickened fascination at the flabby, drooping pouches beside the mouth, the distorted, bulging head and the short legs, armed with long, curving talons—legs that sprang from out the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... married she would cultivate the soil like the other women; her flower-like whiteness would fade and turn yellow; her hands would become black and scaly; she would be like her mother and all the old peasant women, a female skeleton, bent and knaggy, like the trunk of an olive tree. These thoughts saddened Febrer, as a great injustice. How had the simple Pep, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... silver plain, and the little house with its orchard at the island's end, not a stone's throw from the boats and nets, so marine in its situation that one could conceive it farmed by a merman and see him working his scaly tail up the straight path that drove through the garden to the door, a sheep-fish wriggling at his heels. They saw too the pastures of the rest of the island, of a rougher brine-qualified green, and the one black tree that stood against them like the ace of clubs; and past them lay the channel ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... in the dust, sometimes quite unconsciously, and sometimes as if a wager depended on the success with which he did it—when, on looking down the street, he observed a little broad, squat man, with a fiery red head, a face almost scaly with freckles, wide projecting cheek-bones, and a nose so thoroughly of the saddle species, that a rule laid across the base of it, immediately between the eyes, would lie close to the whole front of his face. In addition to these personal accomplishments, he had a pair of ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Beast, bird, or fish,—beast!' and you have to name one while he counts ten? If a beast has been requested, you can think of one fish and two birds, but no beasts. If he says 'Fish,' all the beasts in the universe stalk through your memory, but not one finny, scaly, swimming thing! Well, that is the effect of 'For instance?' on my faculties. So I stumbled a bit, and succeeded in recalling, as objects which do not improve with age, mushrooms, women, and chickens, and he ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... The dens of the amphitheatre disgorged at once a hundred lions: a hundred darts from the unerring hand of Commodus laid them dead as they run raging round the Arena. Neither the huge bulk of the elephant, nor the scaly hide of the rhinoceros, could defend them from his stroke. Aethiopia and India yielded their most extraordinary productions; and several animals were slain in the amphitheatre, which had been seen only in the representations of art, or perhaps of fancy. [34] In all these exhibitions, the securest ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... roads both on the Kent and Essex shores appear to converge to this point. The church has some interesting miserere stalls and brasses to the Faunce family (17th century). On the walls we find specimens of that somewhat rare fern, the scaly ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... is about the size of a raven, and is of a similar color, but its feathers have a more scaly appearance, from being margined with a different shade of glossy blue. It is also allied to the crows in its structure, being very similar to them in its feet and bill. On its head it bears a crest, different from that of any other bird. It is formed of feathers ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... similar to those seen in King George's Sound. There were in it several masses resembling those which contain the hair and bones of mice, and are disgorged by the owls in England after the flesh is digested. These masses were larger, and consisted of the hair of seals and of land animals, of the scaly feathers of penguins, and the bones of birds and small quadrupeds. Possibly the constructor of the nest might be an enormous owl, and if so, the cause of the bird being never seen, whilst the nests were not scarce, would be from its not going ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... and spear. Athena, whose aegis was a scaly cloak or mantle bordered with serpents and ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Old Mother Nature. "They are not fully webbed as Paddy's are, but there is a little webbing between some of the toes, enough to be of great help in swimming. His tail is of greater use in swimming than is Paddy's. It is bare and scaly, but instead of being flat top and bottom it is flattened on the sides, and he uses it as a propeller, moving it rapidly ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... placed the blades of the shovels over their heads. To right, to left, in front and behind, shells burst so near that every one of them shook us in our bed of clay; and it became soon one continuous quaking that seized the wretched gutter, crowded with men and scaly with shovels, under the strata of smoke and the falling fire. The splinters and debris crossed in all directions with a network of noise over the dazzling field. No second passed but we all thought what some ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... although he himself felt by no means sure that at any moment some scaly monster might not descend from the roof; "but I'll tell you what we'll do. ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... warrior, instead of the fair maiden he expected to see, than from his leathern throat he sent forth a cry of rage louder and more tremendous than thunder, and arousing himself he prepared for the contest about to occur. As he reared up on his hind legs, with his wings outspread, and his long scaly tail, with a huge red fork, extending far away behind him, his sharp claws wide open, each of the size of a large ship's anchor, his gaping mouth armed with double rows of huge teeth, between which appeared a fiery red tongue, and vast eyes blazing ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... the sunlight flickered so bright through the grapevine leaves and the woodpecker hammered away in the crooked elm that trailed out over the water. As I went along the road back to the bridge, I kept picking off little pieces of scaly chalk from the dried water gullies, and breaking ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... better say a 'hole litter. Now Miss Jones, I luv Sal you no, an have tried to make a good husban', but I call this a scaly trick, an ef thar's any law in this country I'm goin' to see ef a woman kin have thribbs, an make a man take keer uv 'em. I ain't goin' to begin to ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... again until the jungle rang with the uproar, and then it fled, still screaming and still holding Evelyn clutched fast against its scaly breast. ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... sun like blowing diamond-dust. The rocks seemed set with jewels, or patterned with mosaic; and there were caves—caves almost too good to be true. Yet if we could believe our eyes, they were true, even the dark cavern where, once upon a time, lived a scaly dragon who terrorized the whole country for miles around, and had no relish for his meals unless they were composed of the most exquisite young maidens—though he would accept a child as an hors d'oeuvre. In such a strange world as this, after all, it was no harder to believe in dragons, than ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... befriend the toil; For strong the god, and perfected in guile. Strech'd on the shelly shore, he first surveys The flouncing herd ascending from the seas; Their number summ'd, reposed in sleep profound The scaly charge their guardian god surround; So with his battening flocks the careful swain Abides pavilion'd on the grassy plain. With powers united, obstinately bold, Invade him, couch'd amid the scaly fold; Instant he wears, elusive of the rape, The mimic force of every savage shape; Or ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... that I had caught a Tartar; but I had now gone too far to back out with credit: my self-respect wouldn't admit of the thought. So, taking a short breathing spell, I again advanced to the attack, somewhat encouraged by perceiving that my scaly antagonist seemed exhausted and distressed by his recent exertions. His mouth was wide open, and his gills quivered; but I was rather uncertain whether to regard this as a hostile demonstration, or a sign of pain and fatigue. However, at it we went; and, after ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... filthier than any I have heard from a bookmaker. She lisped, and there was a suggestion in her accent of East Prussia or Western Russia. Her face was permanently reddened by alcohol. The skin was coarse, almost scaly, and her whole person sagged abominably. She wore no corsets, but her green frock was of an artful shade to match her brassy hair. Her hat was ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... seemed, judging from the glimpse I got; its novelty whetted my curiosity: if it would have come out boldly, perhaps I might philosophically have stood my ground, and coolly surveyed the long thing from forked tongue to scaly tail-tip; but it merely rustled in the leaves of a bad novel; and, on encountering a hasty and ill-advised demonstration of wrath, recoiled and vanished, hissing. She ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... reflected—tyrants, freemen, slaves. The swarthy Moor, the soft Circassian dame, The British sailor not unknown to fame; Innumerous nations crowd the lofty door, Innumerous footsteps print the sandy shore; While verse might easier name the scaly tribe, } That in her seas their nourishment imbibe, } Than Venice and her various charms ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... fashion, with edibles of all sorts; things early and things out of season, dainties not yet in existence or having long ceased to exist, for the common crowd. In the kitchen they showed us, in great tanks, huge sea-turtles which lifted their scaly heads above the water, resembling snakes caught between two platters. Their little horny eyes looked with uneasiness at the light which was held near them, and their flippers, like oars of some disabled galley, vaguely moved up and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... convenience. Porgy now began to pervade the air with an astringent perfume of the sea: none of your Fulton Market smells of stagnating fish, but a clean, wholesome, coralline odor, such as we may imagine supplied to the Peris "beneath the dark sea" by the scaly fellows in the toilet line down there, who are likely to keep it for sale in conch-shells,—quarts and pints. Porgy prevailed to that extent, in fact, that it came to be talked of, by-and-by, as a circulating medium; and a hard-fisted mechanic ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... bright, with one or two fish suspended over the centre of it, keeping watch and ward. If an intruder approached, they would dart at him spitefully. These fish have the air of bantam cocks, and, with their sharp, prickly fins and spines and scaly sides, must be ugly customers in a hand-to-hand encounter with other finny warriors. To a hungry man they look about as unpromising as hemlock slivers, so thorny and thin are they; yet there is sweet meat in them, as ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... assistance, and speedily scraped away the shingle, until an old-fashioned gun was exposed to view; it was coated and scaly with rust to such an extent, that we were unable to form any idea as to its age or nationality. It would most probably have been a twelve or eighteen-pounder howitzer, for it was about four feet in length, and disproportionately large in girth; ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... with strong spines slightly curved downward, by which the shoots are supported in their rambling growth. They lay hold of the surrounding bushes and branches of trees, often covering the tops of the tallest, and turning in all directions. The seed is a small hard nut, with a thin scaly covering, and is produced ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... chief. "That's as far as she'd go, too, in defying the law. But I don't much like it. Those Beekmans have a lot of influence, and if she got sore she could make us a heap of trouble! Besides it's sort of a scaly trick making her give up on him ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... third ripe century stands complete, As once again the sons of Harvard meet, Rejoicing, numerous as the seashore sands, Drawn from all quarters,—farthest distant lands, Where through the reeds the scaly saurian steals, Where cold Alaska feeds her floundering seals, Where Plymouth, glorying, wears her iron crown, Where Sacramento sees the suns go down; Nay, from the cloisters whence the refluent tide Wafts their pale students to our Mother's side,— Mid all ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Bright day after bright day, dripping night after dripping night, the never-ending filtering or gusty fall of leaves. The fall of walnuts, dropping from bare boughs with muffled boom into the deep grass. The fall of the hickory-nut, rattling noisily down through the scaly limbs and scattering its hulls among the stones of the ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... she gazed, but midst the tide Two angel forms were seen to glide, The genii of the stream: Their scaly armour's Tyrian hue, Through richest purple, to the view ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... moment before, it was gliding along in rapid retreat, its glistening form stretched to its full length along the earth. The next instant it had assumed the appearance of a coiled cable, over the edge of which projected its fierce head, with the scaly skin of its neck broadly extended, into that hood-like form ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... of Aristaeus. But Aristaeus, unflinching, kept his firm hold of the chain. Next did he become a tiger, tawny and velvet black, and fierce to devour. And still Aristaeus held the chain, and never let his eye fall before the glare of the beast that sought to devour him. A scaly dragon came next, breathing out flames, and yet Aristaeus held him. Then came a lion, its yellow pelt scented with the lust of killing, and while Aristaeus yet strove against him there came to terrify his listening ears the sound of fire ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... the Dragon unto death and had carried her away into the wood. Then, while the Prince lay sleeping, she heard the Dragon calling to her in its pain, and crept back to where it lay bleeding, and put her arms about its scaly neck and kissed it; and that healed it. I was hoping myself that at this point it would turn into a prince itself, but it didn't; it just remained a dragon— so the wind said. Yet the Princess loved it: ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... of madness, Nelson hammered his heels into the podoko's scaly side and wished he dared let go the saddle horn to draw his pistol, but to loose his grip ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... Christ and the saints in His train, the devil and his followers are represented here, as frequently in Luther, under the figure of a dragon with a scaly tail. ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... monster sweeping about madly among the men. In the water his vast tail was lashing the surface of the sea, and churning it into foam. Here I once more took aim immediately under the fore-fin, where there was no scaly covering. Once more I fired. This time it was with fatal effect; and after one or two convulsive movements the monster, with a low, deep bellow, let his head fall ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... scaly eyelids and glistening eyes was sitting on a bench just inside the office-door. She fixed her eyes upon Elfride with an expression whose force it was impossible to doubt, but the meaning of which was not clear; then upon the carriage they had left. She seemed ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... tubercles, thickly clothed with deformed leaves, and invested by a vast number of hairs, longer and more dense than usual. A similar deformity sometimes occurs in an Indian species of Artabotrys; in these specimens the branchlets are contracted in length, and bear numerous closely packed scaly leaves, densely hairy, and ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... attacked the precipitous, almost invincible mountain from another side, the still early hour of the day alone permitting the renewal of the attempt. Leaving their telescope and provisions to await their return, they boldly scrambled, crept and worked their way up the scaly side, and finally reached the summit in safety. The view thence they declared to be magnificent. They too raised a cromlech, and then a giddy descent followed. However, all three were full of spirits when Jakob met them, and the Ausserkofers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... slow—slower than the poor proverbial snail or tortoise—and I would leave her half a mile or so behind to force my way through unkept hedges, climb hills, and explore woods and thickets to converse with every bird and shy little beast and scaly creature I could discover. But mark what follows. In the late afternoon I would be back in the road or footpath, satisfied to go slow, then slower still, until—the snail in woman shape would be obliged to slacken her pace to keep ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... about nine o'clock," he remarked. "Have you seen anything this morning of the stranger from Scaly Brook? I think you said he was to be on hand ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... heat, he lay down to sleep in a cave. Now in this cave dwelt a dragon of enormous size and unamiable character. What was the horror of the exiled prince when he was aroused from slumber by the fiery breath of the dragon, and felt its scaly coils about him! ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... which with carefull heed The silver scaly trouts doe tend full well, And greedy pikes which use therein to feed; (Those trouts and pikes all others doo excell;) And ye likewise, which keepe the rushy lake, Where none doo fishes take; Bynd up the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... shelves of men who possess no such toys of their own? When I was a girl I had access to a small and well-chosen library (not greatly exceeding Montaigne's fourscore volumes), each book enriched with an appropriate device of scaly dragon guarding the apples of Hesperides. Beneath the dragon was the motto (Johnsonian in form if not in substance), "Honour and Obligation demand the prompt return of borrowed Books." These words ate into my innocent ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... tall, robust, perennial grass with rhizomes producing numerous creeping stolons densely covered with scaly-sheaths. The aerial stems are erect, freely branching at the base, slender, 2 to 3 ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... latent boughs alone, O songs! (scaly and bare, like eagles' talons,) But haply for some sunny day (who knows?) some future spring, some summer—bursting forth, To verdant leaves, or sheltering shade—to nourishing fruit, Apples and grapes—the stalwart limbs of trees ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... bell relate? It was so very old, it was there before our grandmothers' grandmothers were born, and yet it was a child compared with the merman, who is an old, quiet, strange-looking person, with eel-skin leggings, a scaly tunic adorned with yellow water-lilies, a wreath of sedges in his hair, and weeds in his beard. It must be confessed he was not very ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... fisherman. The deluded merchant, after seeking her awhile, is obliged to set sail and depart without his ware. She returns home to find her lover Petulius being tempted by a 'syren,' who is evidently a mermaid with looking-glass and comb and scaly tail, disporting herself by the shore—the scene being laid, by the way, on the coast of Arcadia. Protea at once changes her disguise to the ghost of Ulysses, and is in time to warn her lover of his danger. Finally, at Cupid's intercession her ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... for an instant, sleepily rubbing their eyes with their brazen fingers, while all the snakes on their heads reared themselves on end with surprise, and with venomous malice against they knew not what. But when the Gorgons saw the scaly carcass of Medusa, headless, and her golden wings all ruffled, and half spread out on the sand, it was really awful to hear what yells and screeches they set up. And then the snakes! They sent forth a hundred-fold hiss, with ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it how far we go?" his scaly friend replied. "There is another shore, you know, upon the other side. The further off from England the nearer is to France— Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance. Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... use of it is made one of the peculiar privileges of the chiefs. The young son of Terreeoboo, who was about twelve years old, used to boast of his being admitted to drink ava, and shewed us, with great triumph, a small spot in his side that was growing scaly. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... streams, And the swift smooth heads of its forces, and its swirling wells and deep, Where hang the poised fishes, and their watch in the rock-halls keep. And so, as he thought of it all, and its deeds and its wanderings, Whereby it ran to the sea down the road of scaly things, His body was changed with his thought, as yet was the wont of our kind, And he grew but an Otter indeed; and his eyes were sleeping and blind The while he devoured the prey, a golden red-flecked trout. Then passed by Odin and Haenir, nor cumbered their souls with doubt; ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... catkin adjacent to the cone is completely covered with quantities of pale yellow farina. If handled, it covers the fingers as though they had been dipped in sulphur-flour; shake the branch and it flies off, a little cloud of powdery particles. The scaly bark takes a ruddy tinge, when the sunshine falls upon it, and would then, I think, be worthy the attention of an artist as much as the birch bark, whose peculiar mingling of silvery white, orange, and brown, painters so often endeavour to represent on canvas. There ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... forehead, there the M Had trac'd most plainly. Who would deem, that scent Of water and an apple, could have prov'd Powerful to generate such pining want, Not knowing how it wrought? While now I stood Wond'ring what thus could waste them (for the cause Of their gaunt hollowness and scaly rind Appear'd not) lo! a spirit turn'd his eyes In their deep-sunken cell, and fasten'd then On me, then cried with vehemence aloud: "What grace is this vouchsaf'd me?" By his looks I ne'er had recogniz'd him: but the voice Brought to my knowledge what his cheer ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... minister was not discriminating; he was too fierce and sweeping, saying, among other things, that there was a universal human hatred for snakes, and that one of the chief purposes of the human heel was to bruise their scaly heads. ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... that I am! ah, whither shall I go? Will you not hear me, nor regard my woe? I'll strip, and throw me from yon rock so high, Where Olpis sits to watch the scaly fry. Should I be drown'd, or 'scape with life away, If cured of love, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... head rose nearly ten feet into the air. It looked down upon the advancing dwarf with a hungry look and its long red tongue flicked in and out. Then with a devilish hiss it swept toward him, nearly capsizing the boat. Gunnar's sword went halfway through the thick, scaly neck, but with a leap it was upon him, its fore-limbs spread out fan-wise, flogging and clawing. The head opened. Long fangs gleamed as it struck. Gunnar ducked and dodged and the striking fangs missed. The head flashed over Gunnar's shoulder. The weight of it sent him to his knees, and his ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... Christmas—Carl had seen neither Ruth nor Gertie; but of the office he had seen too much. They were "rushing work" on the Touricar to have it on the market early in 1913. Every afternoon or evening he left the office with his tongue scaly from too much nervous smoking; poked dully about the streets, not much desiring to go any place, nor to watch the crowds, after all the curiosity had been drawn out of him by hours of work. Several times he went to a super-movie, a cinema ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Buds scaly; leaves evergreen and persistent for several years (except in Larix), scattered along the twigs, spirally arranged or tufted, linear, needle-shaped, or scale-like; sterile and fertile flowers separate upon the same plant; stamens (subtended by scales) spirally arranged upon a central ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... animals which have either scaly or naked skins, but no fur or feathers; which live in the water, breathe it with their gills, and ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... vocal sounds, that emulate the lyre; And Thebes, such, Fate, are thy disastrous turns! Now prostrate o'er her pompous ruins mourns; A monkey-god, prodigious to be told! Strikes the beholder's eye with burnish'd gold: To godship here blue Triton's scaly herd, The river-progeny is there preferr'd: Through towns Diana's power neglected lies, Where to her dogs aspiring temples rise: And should you leeks or onions eat, no time Would expiate the sacrilegious crime Religious nations sure, and blest abodes, Where ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... The room beyond, looking on Main Street, was business-office, consulting-room, operating-room, and, in an alcove, bacteriological and chemical laboratory. The wooden floors of both rooms were bare; the furniture was brown and scaly. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the same meaning in the following words. They are, however, too simple to need defining; in fact, there are no simpler words on which to base definitions: airy, balky, bony, briny, chunky, downy, dusty, healthy, hearty, miry, musty, rusty, scaly, showy, sinewy, wealthy, worthy. ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... Shrapnel's exhortations were so worded as to induce her to comport herself like a Scriptural woman, humbly wakeful to the surpassing splendour of the high fortune which had befallen her in being so selected, and obedient at a sign. But she was, it appeared that she was, a maid of scaly vision, not perceptive of the blessedness of her lot. She could have been very little perceptive, for she did not understand his casual allusion to Beauchamp's readiness to overcome 'a natural repugnance,' for the purpose of making her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The bark is thin and scaly. The fruit is a cone about an inch in diameter. The general color of the tree is a dull, deep green which, however, turns orange brown in ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... Ah! But who the scaly swimmers Would behold in modern day— When a bust of ivory glimmers, Cool from kisses of ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... those in the west the use of water out of leather buckets; and in the south marriage with a first cousin on the mother's side. Hindustani Brahmans eat meat, according to Mr. Joshi, and others are now also adopting this custom. The kinds of meat permitted are mutton and venison, scaly, but not scaleless, fish, hares, and even the tortoise, wild boar, wild buffalo and rhinoceros. Brahmans are said even to eat domestic fowls, though not openly, and wild jungle fowls are preferred, but are seldom obtainable. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... distinguishes shin-bones. There were monstrous studs upon a glorious expanse of 'biled' shirt; a small investment of cheap, tawdry rings set off the chimpanzee-like fingers; and, often enough, gloves invested the hands, whose horny, reticulated skin reminded me of the black fowl, or the scaly feet of African cranes pacing at ease over the burning sands. Each dandy had his badine upon whose nice conduct he prided himself; the toothpick was as omnipresent as the crutch, nor was the 'quizzing-glass' ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... considered it my duty to tell you. I've kinda had my suspicions all fall, that there was somethin' scaly goin' on at Cold Spring. Looked to me like Man had too blamed many calves missed by spring round-up—for the size of his herd. I dunno, of course, jest where he gits 'em—you'll have to find that out. But he's brung twelve er fourteen to the ranch, two er three at a time. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... last our bliss Full and perfect is: But now begins; for from this happy day, The old dragon, under ground In straiter limits bound, Not half so far casts his usurped sway; And, wroth to see his kingdom fail, Swinges[120] the scaly horror of ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... their branches are scattered, crack, and the tree dies. They are also infested with worms, which gnaw the bark all around, then attack the interior and destroy them. The only remedy which has hitherto been found, is to employ people to kill these worms, which are deposited by a small, scaly winged insect, which gnaws the tree; as soon as it hears the approach of its destroyers, it lets itself fall, and trusts to ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... insects appear to have no preference for any particular class of animals. They are often found on the hair of dead mammalia, and among the feathers of birds which have been shot; even the toad, the frog, and the scaly lizard are not spared by them. Much more troublesome than these insects are the antanas, which are not visible to the naked eye. They penetrate the surface of the skin, and introduce themselves beneath it, where they propagate with incredible rapidity; and ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... pecan tree owned by Mr. B. M. Young of Morgan City, Louisiana, was top worked with scions from the McAllister hican some seven or eight feet above ground, and later on the bark of the pecan trunk below the point of union became scaly like that ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... spoke to a large and lofty tree, which Mr. A.R. Wallace, the celebrated naturalist and traveller, describes as resembling an elm in general character but with a more smooth and scaly bark. The fruit is round, or slightly oval, about the size of a man's head, of a green colour, and covered all over with short spines which are very strong and so sharp that it is difficult to lift the fruit from ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... beak in the stalk of the potato. The larva subsequently hatches out, and bores into the heart of the stalk, always proceeding downward toward the root. When full grown, it is a little more than one fourth of an inch in length, and is a soft, whitish, legless grub, with a scaly head. Hence it can always be readily distinguished from the larva of the stalk-borer, which has invariably sixteen legs, no matter how small it may be. Unlike this last insect, it becomes a pupa in the interior of the potato-stalk which it ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... element and vanish forever, and though you broke a quartern loaf into crumbs, he would snap his tail at you with enlightened contempt. If," said my father, soliloquizing, "I had been as syllogistic as those scaly logicians, I should never have swallowed that hook which—Hum! there—least said soonest mended. But, Mr. Bolt, to return ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... noisy dash, their urns. Uprears his head, The azure serpent from the cavern deep; And breathes forth hisses dire: their urns they drop; The blood forsakes their bodies; sudden fear Chills their astonish'd limbs. He writhing quick, Forms scaly circles; spiral twisting round, Bends in an arch immense to leap, and rears In the thin air erect, 'bove half his height; All the wide grove o'erlooking. Such his size, Could all be seen, than that vast snake no less, Whose huge bulk lies the Arctic bears between. The Tyrians quick he seizes; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... globe its breach repair'd, And this bold hemisphere its shoulders rear'd, Back to those heights, whose hovering vapor shrouds My rock-raised world in Alleganian clouds, The Atlantic waste its coral kingdom spread, And scaly nations here their gambols led; Till by degrees, thro following tracts of time, From laboring ocean rose the sedgy clime, As from unloaded waves the rising sand Swell'd into light and gently drew to land. For, moved by trade winds o'er the flaming zone, The waves roll westward with ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... make seven miles to-day," said Tom, as he came forward with immense strides, carrying a compass and Jacob's-staff. Behind him the axemen slashed along, striking white slivers from the pink and scaly columns of red pines that shot up a hundred and twenty feet without a branch. If any underbrush grew there, it was beneath the eight-feet-deep February snow, so that one could see far away down a multitude ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... and soon in the slimy bottom, yards below, huge fat salamanders, long-lost and forgotten tadpoles as large as rats, gigantic toads, enormous flat beetles, all kinds of hairy, scaly, spiny, blear-eyed, bulbous, shapeless monsters without name, mud-colored offspring of the mire that had been sleeping there for hundreds of years, woke up, and crawled in and out, and wallowed and interwriggled, and devoured each other, like the great saurians and batrachians in my Manuel ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... vary both as to nature and arrangement in the case of the hairs of different animals, so that by the aid of the microscope we have often a means of determining from what kind of animal the hair has been derived. It is on the nature of this outside scaly covering of the shaft, and in the manner of attachment of these scaly plates, that the true distinction between wool and hair rests. The principal epidermal characteristic of a true wool is the capacity of its fibres to felt or mat together. This arises from the greater ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... heads, long, sharp beaks, white breasts, and bluish backs. Their wings were so short that they looked more like the fins of a fish, and indeed we soon saw that they used them for the purpose of swimming under water. There were no quills on these wings, but a sort of scaly feathers, which also thickly covered their bodies. Their legs were short, and placed so far back that the birds, while on land, were obliged to stand quite upright in order to keep their balance; ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... Delphine profoundly depressed by Blanquette's story. Here was Blanquette eating her heart out for Paragot, who was killing his soul for Joanna, who was miserably unhappy on account of her husband, who was suffering some penalty for his scaly-headed vulturedom. It was a kind of House-that-Jack-built tale of misery, of which I ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... armoured fishes. Then the Mud-fishes form another class. But by far the most numerous is that to which the Bony-skeletoned fishes, with scales like those of the Salmon, belong. A few species are destitute of any bony or scaly covering; and one of them—the Electric Eel of South American rivers—protects itself by giving a sharp electric shock to any creature that comes in ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... flood, what flood soe'er it be." Scarce had he finish'd, when, with speckled pride, A serpent from the tomb began to glide; His hugy bulk on sev'n high volumes roll'd; Blue was his breadth of back, but streak'd with scaly gold: Thus riding on his curls, he seem'd to pass A rolling fire along, and singe the grass. More various colors thro' his body run, Than Iris when her bow imbibes the sun. Betwixt the rising altars, and around, The sacred monster ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... abandon him to his more voracious brethren of the deep. These thoughts so filled my mind, that at night I continued to dream over again the whole incident, beginning with my patient angling from the rock, and concluding with my disconsolate swim to shore—and pursued my scaly antagonist quite as determinedly in my sleep as I had ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... light, soft and close-grained, having a color that varies from yellow to red. The needles, which are found in clusters of five, are slender, 1-1/2 to 3 inches long, and are dark green. They are shed during the fifth or sixth year. The buds of the tree are found bunched at the branch tips and are scaly and pointed. The limber pine has flowers like those of the white pine, except that they are rose-colored. Although the fruit is described as annual, I have found that, in this locality, it takes about ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... coming, and fearfully awaited its approach. And she had not long to wait. For presently there appeared, flying between the calm moonlight and the figure, and casting a doleful shadow over his form, a scaly and dreadful dragon, like those we read of that devastated whole countries in the old, old times. This hideous beast breathed fire and smoke from its horrid nostrils as it flew, and it flapped its fearful way downwards to scorch and destroy the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... evergreen tree with a leaf looking a great deal like that of redwood, hemlock, or fir at a distance. It is found growing in the mountains, down narrow canyons, and along streams. It likes shade, water, and altitude. Its bark is reddish beneath and scaly or fuzzy on the surface. Its limbs stand straight out from the trunk at an acute angle, not drooping as those ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... that the weapon pierced the heart, and all the grass around turned crimson with the blood that flowed from the dying monster. So St. George of England cut off the dreadful head, and hanging it on a truncheon made of the spear which at the beginning of the combat had shivered against the beast's scaly back, he mounted his steed Bayard, and proceeded to the ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... scared kingfisher, and a plash And turbid streak upon the streamlet's face, Betray the water-rat's swift dive and path Across the bottom to his burrow deep. The moss is plump and soft, the tawny leaves Are crisp beneath my tread, and scaly twigs Startle my wandering eye like basking snakes. Where this thick brush displays its emerald tent, I stretch my wearied frame, for solitude To steal within my heart. How hushed the scene At first, and then, to the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... waves dashing against the rocks of Baal-zephon. Now—a short hour after he had left the tower—he reached the first tents of the camp, and the familiar cry: "Unclean!" as well as the mourning-robes of those whose scaly, disfigured faces looked forth from the ruins of the tents which the storm had overthrown, informed him that he had reached the lepers, whom Moses had commanded ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... blue coats with red jackets over them; and the Ural ones with light blue—all with lances, on little horses and high saddles. The Tartars are nearly all heathen or Moslem. The Circassians appeared in scaly coats of mail and helmets. They showed off their equestrian accomplishments, fired from the horse with their long guns, shielded themselves from their pursuers by their kantschu,[41] concealed themselves by throwing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... the many conflicts between the two rival states Lao Tzu entered the battle, whereupon Ch'iung Hsiao, a goddess who fought for the house of Shang (Chou), hurled into the air her gold scaly-dragon scissors. As these slowly descended, opening and closing in a most ominous manner, Lao Tzu waved the sleeve of his jacket and they fell into the sea and became absolutely motionless. Many similar tricks were used by the various ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... the bank,—what black thing moves towards him across the water? The crocodile! coming with tears in his eyes, and a long grin of serried teeth. Coming!—the ugly scaly head is always nearer and nearer. The boy screams; but who should hear him? He feels whether the talisman be yet round his neck. He screams again, calling, in half-delirium, upon his dead mother. Meanwhile the scaly snout is close ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... this earliest spring bouquet be forgotten. The crimson stars of its fertile flowers, ten or a dozen little rays at the ends of the scaly buds on the bare stems, are the most richly colored flowers of the earliest spring. Some years they are formed as early as the twentieth of March. When you find them then look for the re-appearance of the mud-turtles down in the valleys ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... nights they stuck to the poultice—though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the poultice stuck to them. In spite of many washings in hot water, their faces became noticeably scaly. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... make me aware of my perilous position. Merciful heaven! my conjecture was too true!—the dead log was no log, but an enormous crocodile!—its hideous shape was plainly seen; its long cloven head and broad scaly back glittered high above the water, and its snout was elevated and turned towards me, as though it was just getting over a surprise, and coming to the knowledge of what sort of creature ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... of the lake churned this way and that and a horrible scaly monster came to the surface. He crawled out on shore and clutched the Prince around the waist. And the Prince clutched him in a grip just as strong and there they swayed back and forth, and rolled over, and wrestled together on the shore ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... see 'im on the back of 'arf-a-quid— 'E spiked the fiery dragon with a spear in both 'is 'ands, But to-day, if 'e 'd to do what then he did, 'E 'd roll up easy in an armoured car, 'E 'd loose off a little Lewis gun, Then 'e 'd 'oist the scaly dragon upon a G.S. wagon And cart 'im 'ome to show ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... would be expected, if the view just quoted were correct, that a transition from scales to feathers would be visible at the ankle-joint. This, however, is not the case. In fowls some breeds have scaly shanks and others feathered. In those with scaly legs I have found cases in winch, in the chicks, there were two or three very minute feathers, and I have examined these microscopically by means of sections of the skin. ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... English,—not a patois, but English,—rare in Labrador as politicians in heaven. The French Canadians found in Southern Labrador speak a kind of skim-milk French, with a little sour-milk English; the Newfoundland Labradorians say "Him's good for he," and in general use a very "scaly" lingo, learned from cod-fish, one would think. Here was a mother, acceptable to Lindley Murray, who had instructed her children. One of these—S——, our best social explorer, found her out—owned and read a volume of Plato, and had sent to L'anse du Loup, twenty-four miles, to borrow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Neckar, where the oval town of Mannheim, standing in the fork between the two rivers, has from here the look of a human head in a cleft stick. Martial music from many bands strikes up as the crossing is effected, and the undulating columns twinkle as if they were scaly serpents. ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... By no means a scaly idea. I rather fancy, Comrade Bannister, that you have whanged the nail on the head. Is he strong on any particular team? I mean, have you ever heard him, in the intervals of business worries, stamping on his desk and yelling, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... underground Bore up his branching head; scarce from his mould Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved His vastness; fleeced the flocks and bleating rose As plants; ambiguous between sea and land, The river-horse and scaly crocodile. At once came forth whatever creeps the ground, ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... delicate threads, and thousands of curious little shell-fish were tranquilly pursuing their quiet life. The rocks where the pellucid water lay were in some places crusted with barnacles, which were opening and shutting the little white scaly doors of their tiny houses, and drawing in and out those delicate pink plumes which seem to be their nerves of enjoyment. Moses and Mara had rambled and played here many hours of their childhood, amusing themselves with catching crabs and young lobsters and various little fish for these rocky ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... world of waves, Where finny nations glide; Within whose deep, dark caves The ocean monsters hide: His power is sovereign there, To raise, to quell the storm; The depths his bounty share, Where sport the scaly swarm: Tempests and calms obey the same almighty voice, Which rules the earth and skies, and bids far worlds ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... chair. In appearance Mr. Scogan was like one of those extinct bird-lizards of the Tertiary. His nose was beaked, his dark eye had the shining quickness of a robin's. But there was nothing soft or gracious or feathery about him. The skin of his wrinkled brown face had a dry and scaly look; his hands were the hands of a crocodile. His movements were marked by the lizard's disconcertingly abrupt clockwork speed; his speech was thin, fluty, and dry. Henry Wimbush's school-fellow and exact contemporary, Mr. Scogan ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... Professor, "that I was struggling for dear life with a monstrous reptile, whose scaly coils wound about my body, while the extremity of his own was lost in the distance. At last I managed to shake myself free, and setting my foot on his neck, I was preparing to cut his throat, when the animal looked up at me with an appealing expression, and said, 'At least ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... Carhaix, in silence, opened a door. They advanced into an immense storeroom, containing colossal broken statues of saints, scaly and dilapidated apostles, Saint Matthew legless and armless, Saint Luke escorted by a fragmentary ox, Saint Mark lacking a shoulder and part of his beard, Saint Peter holding up an arm from which the hand holding the keys was ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... us, and suddenly the boat shot forward as in a mill-race, and we clutched the cabin's roof. A triumphant gleam was in Xavier's eyes, for he had hit the channel squarely. And then, like a monster out of the deep, the scaly, black back of a great northern pine was flung up beside us and sheered us across the channel until we were at the very edge of the foam-specked, spinning water. But Xavier saw it, and quick as lightning brought his helm over and laughed as he heard it crunching ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Unknown. The scene comes back to me, here, in my little room in Norwood, with its every detail as clearly marked as on the night it was first enacted. The long range of cone-shaped mountains, darkly silhouetted against the silvery sky, and seemingly hushed in gaping expectancy; the shining, scaly surface of some far-off tarn or river, perceptible only at intervals, owing to the thick clusters of gently nodding pines; the white-washed walls of cottages, glistening amid the dark green denseness of the thickly leaved box trees, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... very old and completely hairless. The other was young and beautiful. As Barrent moved closer to the table, he saw, with a sense of shock, that her legs were joined below the knee by a membrane of scaly skin, and her feet were of ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... the beach, with its long alligator tail stretched up the bank and its serpentine head and tiny wicked eyes vigilantly watching the shore. Its shell, broad and ancient, was fringed with green moss, and its scaly armpits exposed, were decked with leeches, at which a couple of peetweets pecked with eager interest, apparently to the monster's satisfaction. Its huge limbs and claws were in marked contrast to the small, red eyes. But the latter it was that gave ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... conning-tower to see what happened to their assailant. It was already trying to detach itself and sink back into a more congenial element. As the pressure of the atmosphere decreased its huge body swelled up into still huger proportions. The scaly skin on the two heads and necks puffed up as though air was being pumped in under it. The great eyes protruded out of their sockets; the jaws opened widely as though the creature were gasping ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... other hand, what Sims or Bateman ever imagined weirder caricature than the grotesque larva of the Oniticella, with its extravagant dorsal hump; or the fantastic and alarming silhouette of the Empusa, with its scaly belly raised crozierwise and mounted on four long stilts, its pointed face, turned-up moustaches, great prominent eyes, and a "stupendous mitre": the most grotesque, the most fantastic freaks that creation can ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... that she has the sweetest, kindest, tenderest, funniest, merriest face they ever saw, or want to see. But Tom saw that she was a very tall woman, as tall as her sister: but instead of being gnarly and horny, and scaly, and prickly, like her, she was the most nice, soft, fat, smooth, pussy, cuddly, delicious creature who ever nursed a baby; and she understood babies thoroughly, for she had plenty of her own, whole rows and regiments of them, and has to this day. And all her delight was, whenever she had ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... individual possesses more attributes than flash upon the bodily or mental eye. But this, I say, is deliberate. One knows perfectly well that beneath her skirts any young woman you please does not melt away into the scaly tail of a mermaid, but has a pair of ordinary commonplace legs. One knows that when she has passed through certain well defined experiences in life, a certain definite range of sentiments must exist ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... portico stood Phormio the fishmonger, behind a table heaped with his scaly wares. He was a thick, florid man with blue eyes lit by a humourous twinkle. His arms were crusted with brine. To his waist he was naked. As the friends edged nearer he held up a turbot, calling for a bid. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the barbed hook and finds that he's fast, And plunges and struggles, disdaining to yield, Till exhausted at last to the bank he is reeled, And carefully lifted from out the old stream, While he flounders and gasps and his scaly sides gleam, And you measure his length and guess at his weight— (Five inches too long and a ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... his eyes had wistful shadows under them. He had tossed aside his Service felt when she had taken off her hat, and the sunshine, piercing the thick foliage overhead, dappled the scaly trunks of the blue-gum trees, and dripped gold upon the red-brown head and the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... his estimate of the size of the valley. They rode ten miles west before they began to get into rougher ground, scaly with broken rock, and gradually failing in vegetation. The notch of the west end loomed up, ragged and brushy, evidently a wild jumble of cliffs, ledges, timber and brush. The green patch at the ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... the shaft flew, the beast dropped dead, and the man remained unhurt. The dens of the Amphitheatre disgorged at once a hundred lions: a hundred darts from the unerring hand of Commodus laid them dead as they ran raging round the arena. Neither the huge bulk of the elephant nor the scaly hide of the rhinoceros could defend them from his stroke. AEthiopia and India yielded their most extraordinary productions; and several animals were slain in the Amphitheatre which had been seen only in the representations of art or perhaps of fancy. In all these exhibitions the securest precautions ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Stremona slew, Long fostred in the filth of Lerna lake, Whose many heads out budding ever new Did breed him endlesse labour to subdew: But this same Monster much more ugly was; 145 For seven great heads out of his body grew, An yron brest, and back of scaly bras,[*] And all embrewd in bloud, his eyes did shine ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... pattern. When a child was born, a thin tentacle from the central mass of strands reached out and fastened itself upon him, dragging out his desire year by year until the strand was thick and strong and woven in securely among the old scaly ones. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... markhor, and several varieties of wild goat, sheep and antelope. The smaller quadrupeds include hares and red foxes, not unlike the British breed, only with much brighter coats, and several kinds of rats, some of which are very curious and rare. Destitute of beauty but not without use, the scaly ant-eater is frequently seen; but the most common of all the beasts is an odious species of large lizard, nearly three feet long, which resembles a flabby-skinned crocodile and feeds on carrion. Domestic fowls, goats, sheep and oxen, with the inevitable ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... began to grow upon the roof, and in the crevices of the basement paving. A scaly crumbling vegetation sprouted round the window-sills. Fragments of mortar lost their hold upon the insides of the unused chimneys, and came dropping down. The two trees with the smoky trunks were blighted high up, and the withered branches domineered ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... these amphibious animals are about two feet nine inches in length, with very short fore feet and divided toes, while the hinder are membranous, and adapted for swimming; the body is covered with a soft, glossy, and valuable fur; the tail is oval, scaly, destitute of hair, and about a foot long. These industrious creatures dam up considerable streams, and construct dwellings of many compartments, to protect them from the rigor of the climate, as well as from their numerous ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... central one is about 5 in. long, and the others about half that length. The flowers are borne on the ends of the young, partly-developed tubercles, near the centre of the head; they are erect, tubular, 3 in. to 4 in. long, scaly, gradually widening upwards; the sepals and petals are numerous, and form a beautiful flower of the ordinary Cactus type, quite 4 in. across, and of a rich, clear yellow colour. The anthers, which also are yellow, form a column in the centre, through which ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... was the capital means by which the Augustan poet avoided precision and attained nobility of style. It enabled him to speak of a woman as a "nymph," or a "fair"; of sheep as "the fleecy care"; of fishes as "the scaly tribe"; and of a picket fence as a "spiculated paling." Lowell says of Pope's followers: "As the master had made it an axiom to avoid what was mean or low, so the disciples endeavored to escape from what was common. This ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... scaly tail about the giant pine and tried to pull it out by the roots. The water foamed and boiled with his struggles, but He-who-was-first-Created stood firm, and at last the ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... said by himself and the heavens that in a year from this day the King's daughter will be brought away and devoured by a scaly Green Dragon that will come from ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... family have pretty much the same habits,—differing only where such difference might be expected by reason of climate, food, or other circumstances. What I shall tell you of the alligator, then, will apply in a general way to all his scaly cousins. You know his colour,— dusky-brown above, and dirty yellowish-white underneath. You know that he is covered all over with scales, and you see that on his back these scales rise into protuberances like little pyramids, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... into the clear waters from the deck of our comparatively small steamer, we could see fish in plenty, for the brilliant sun seemed to light up the sea beneath the vessel's keel, while as the screw churned up the water and the steamer rushed on, the scaly occupants of the deep flashed away to right and left, darting out of sight like so many shafts of silver ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... in sight, and that in astonishing variety, from the osprey down to two or three varieties of the sparrow-hawk. A monograph on the Raptores of Eagle Lake would be a most comprehensive work. The osprey, notwithstanding the abundance of his scaly prey, is not common: probably the field is too limited for him. Ducks are the attraction of the other large species. In summer, ducks are rather secondary among the water-birds, the ibis, water-turkey, and flamingo imparting a tropical character ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... O scaly Mame to give me such a deal, To hand me such a bunch when I was true! You played me double and you knew it, too, Nor cared a wad of gum how I would feel. Can you not see that Murphy's handy spiel Is cheap balloon juice of a Blarney brew, A phonograph where all ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... wanted you to notice," replied his governess, "for the flowers are of two kinds, one bearing the stamens, and the other the pistils. The flowers that bear the stamens grow on loose scaly catkins, as you may see in this branch. Those with the pistils are also in catkins, but very small, like a bud. The bud spreads into a little branchlet and bears the flowers at the tip. The calyx is not seen at first; it is a mere membrane ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... gazed for a while on the fair landscape around them. "But this would be a beautiful place for a fight," he began again persuasively. "These great bare rolling Downs for the arena,—and me in my golden armour showing up against your big blue scaly coils! Think what ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... up from the depths. The Dragon started from his den, spitting fire on his path. He cast a look at his victim there on the spot which his blood-thirsty maw knew so well. He raised his scaly body, thus letting his sharp claws be more visible, moved his snaky tail in a circle, and showed his gaping mouth. Snorting the monster crawled along, shooting flames ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... beneath the quivering shade, Where cooling vapors breathe along the mead, The patient fisher takes his silent stand, Intent, his angle trembling in his hand; With looks unmoved, he hopes the scaly breed, And eyes the dancing cork, and bending ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... temples, whose capitals, formed of human faces or lotus flowers, showed partially, breaking the horizontal lines of the roofs and rising like reefs amid the mass of private buildings. Here and there above a garden wall shot up the scaly trunk of a palm tree ending in a plume of leaves, not one of which stirred, for never a breath blew. Acacias, mimosas, and Pharaoh fig-trees formed a cascade of foliage that cast a narrow blue shadow upon the dazzling brilliancy of the ground. These green spots ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... drawing the small figure down beside him, "I was forgetting the dragons, but there they are, with scaly backs, and iron claws, spitting out sparks and flames, just as self-respecting dragons should, ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... he had forgotten his crimes and was burning with the high adventures of a farmyard. In the blue of the sky fat gold-white clouds bellied like the sails of enchanted galleons, and the wind ruffled the cock's bronzed feathers about his scaly legs, blew pearly partings on the black-furred cat that sunned herself by the wall, and whirled two gleaming straws, Orthon-wise, about the cobbles. The triumphant cackling of a hen proclaimed an egg to be as much a miracle as the other daily one of dawn, and the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... winter is passing away, are always heartily welcomed. The buds form in the autumn on the brown twigs, and with the first warm spring sun, long before anything green has started, they swell, and burst open the brown scaly covering, disclosing a soft, downy white ament, or blossom, resembling the toe of a white kitty. This resemblance is perhaps the reason why children ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... nearly 4 inches across, the flesh is white. The stem is long, solid, with a bulbous base. There is a wide, loose ring high up on the stem. The membrane around the base is large and thick. The stem is scaly and shining white like the cap. This pure-looking, handsome mushroom is one of the most poisonous of its kind. It is called Amanita virosa—the poisonous Amanita, from a Latin word meaning poison. We have never found any specimen with insects ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... on his face and neck and hands, and got rid of the black colouring. His body and legs he left untouched, save that he covered them with shirt and trousers from my wardrobe. Then he pulled off a scaly wig, and showed beneath it a head of close-cropped grizzled hair. In ten minutes the old Kaffir had been transformed into an active soldierly-looking man of maybe fifty years. Mr Wardlaw stared as if ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... earth-flax of the Devil's Den, Or swam in the wooded Artichoke, Or coiled by the Northman's Written Rock, Nothing on record is left to show; Only the fact that he lived, we know, And left the cast of a "double head" In the scaly mask which he yearly shed. For he carried a head where his tail should be, And the two, of course, could never agree, But wriggled about with main and might, Now to the left and now to the right; Pulling and twisting this way and that, Neither knew ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... his glass, then to his lips, and lastly into the buttonhole of Blome's vest; there was Hilliard, big, gloomy, maybe with his cavernous eyes seeing the hell where I expected he'd soon be; and last, the little dusty, scaly Pickens, who looked about to leap and ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey |
