"Amphibious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their nostrils exposed. In these waters the capybaras and small caymans paid no attention to one another, swimming and resting in close proximity. They both had the same enemy, the jaguar. The capybara is a game animal only in the sense that a hare or rabbit is. The flesh is good to eat, and its amphibious habits and queer nature and surroundings make it interesting. In some of the ponds the water had about gone, and the capybaras had become for the time being beasts of the marsh and the mud; although they could always find little slimy pools, under a mass of water-lilies, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... reports to national policymakers. Detailed coordinated information was needed not only on such major powers as Germany and Japan, but also on places of little previous interest. In the Pacific Theater, for example, the Navy and Marines had to launch amphibious operations against many islands about which information was unconfirmed or nonexistent. Intelligence authorities resolved that the United States should never again ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... considered this amphibious Pope, with the wool-and-iron back, with the flesh head and hands; and endeavoured to calculate his horoscope. I reckon him the remarkablest Pontiff that has darkened God's daylight, or painted himself in the human retina, for these several thousand ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... "A good, old-fashioned, amphibious story of our fighting with the Frenchmen in the beginning of our century, with a fair sprinkling of ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... to find a better refuge on a rainy day than the amphibious retreat described by Raffles as a "country house in Kensington." There was a good square hall, full of the club comforts so welcome in a home, such as magazines and cigarettes, and a fire when the ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... not so wonderful, as both are found on the coast of the Polar Sea, and both yielded ivory to the stocks of the Siberian merchants. In the same way all the statements which the French Jesuit, AVRIL, during his stay in Moscow in 1686, collected regarding the amphibious animal, Behemoth, occurring on the coast of the Tartarian Sea, (Polar Sea) refer not to the mammoth, as some writers, HOWORTH[215] for example, have supposed, but to the walrus. The name mammoth, which is probably of Tartar origin, Witsen appears ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... froth, half venom, spits himself abroad, In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies, Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. 320 His wit all see-saw, between that and this, } Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, } And he himself one vile Antithesis. } Amphibious thing! that acting either part, The trifling head or the corrupted heart, 325 Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board, Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord. Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest, A Cherub's face, a reptile all the rest; Beauty that shocks you, parts ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... the creeping mo'o, moo-kolo; the roving, wandering mo'o, moo-pelo; the watchful mo'o, moo-kaala; the prophesying mo'o, moo-kaula; the deadly mo'o, moo-make-a-kane. The Hawaiian legends frequently speak of mo'o of extraordinary size living in caverns, amphibious in their nature, and being the ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... part of valor, he climbed a tree in which he saw a convenient resting-place. Between him and the three snakes there was a small pool of water, half concealed by the bushes, and the reptiles had probably come there to drink or to obtain for food some of the amphibious creatures ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... possible amount of suffering; but as that is probably the part to which the greatest amount of nervous influence is directed at the moment of receiving the shot, if we can not be sure of the heart or brain, we are never certain of speedy death. Antelopes, formed for a partially amphibious existence, and other animals of that class, are much more tenacious of life than those which are purely terrestrial. Most antelopes, when in distress or pursued, make for the water. If hunted, they ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... tall gray herons, the ichthyosaurus, holoptychius, dinotherium, and brontozoum of ancient days. Here and there the river is bordered with low alluvial deposits covered with feathery-topped arrow-grass and amphibious vegetation; but generally the banks are about ten feet high and magnificently wooded; they are abrupt, and ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... this amphibious nature. She kept it without hypocrisy in the morning, and broke it without reluctance in the afternoon. As she changed her frock, she wondered whether Cecil was sneering at her; really she must overhaul herself and settle everything up before ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... excursions in their canoes along the neighboring coves of the lake, for the various purposes of fishing, shooting ducks, or inspecting the shores for indications of beaver, otter, and other classes of the smaller fur-animals of amphibious habits. All returning, however, at sunset, they proceeded to cook and eat their suppers, much in the same manner as on the preceding evening; after which, in compliance with the suggestions made by several of the company during the day, they went into a general consultation for the purpose ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... amphibious story of fighting with the Frenchmen in the beginning of our century, with a fair sprinkling ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... has recently been brought to England, with all the flesh about it, in a high state of preservation. This amphibious animal was harpooned while in combat with a crocodile, in a lake in the interior of Africa. The head measures near four feet long, and eight feet in circumference; the jaws open two feet wide, and the cutting-teeth of which it has four ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... always divided as to those amphibious animals called dragoons. It is certainly an advantage to have several battalions of mounted infantry, who can anticipate an enemy at a defile, defend it in retreat, or scour a wood; but to make cavalry out of ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... emerging at last from the cells of this living honeycomb only when they have attained the full amphibian honours of four-legged maturity. Well, Aspredo among cat-fish manages her brood in much the same fashion; only she carries her eggs beneath her body instead of on her back like her amphibious rival. When spawning time approaches, and Aspredo's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, the lower side of her trunk begins to assume, by anticipation, a soft and spongy texture, honeycombed with pits, between which are arranged ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... them for tearing up the ground in order to get at the roots which form its nutriment. These are, besides, formidable weapons, with which when enraged the animal can tear even boats in pieces; for, as you are aware, the hippopotamus is almost amphibious, and browses on water-plants, and lives in the great rivers of Africa, its native country. Its name alone would have told you this had you understood Greek; [Footnote: Ippos, a horse, and potamos, a river. The Greeks, who had seen ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... to notice what he sees will observe the paired frogs in the pond. He can be told that they take this position just before the eggs are laid so that every egg will surely be fertilized. In the amphibious animals the relation of the two parents is closer than in the fishes, but yet there is no union between them, that appearing only when it is necessary. The stern law of necessity governing every step of the reproductive function may be made very impressive ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... whom they are intended. In Mexico, on the march to Orizaba, it had the mortification to trudge along on foot, while midshipmen commanded sections of a light battery, marines were cannoneers, and sailors rode the horses, using, in their amphibious state, the oddest medley of sea-terms and military jargon that ever grated on professional ears. It would have been equally proper to put an artillery captain in command of the frigate Cumberland then lying in the harbor of Vera Cruz, with no less a prospect ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Loch Linnhe and the Murray frith; some made their way through the blue Mediterranean to "Micklegard," the Great City of the Byzantine Emperor, and in his service wielded their stout axes against Magyar and Saracen;[172] some found their amphibious natures better satisfied upon the islands of the Atlantic ridge,—the Orkneys, Shetlands, and Faeroes, and especially noble Iceland. There an aristocratic republic soon grew up, owning slight and indefinite allegiance to the kings of Norway.[173] The settlement of Iceland was such a wholesale colonization ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... "Amphibious!" exclaimed Roswell Gardiner, in an aside to Mary, as the stranger entered the room, following Baiting Joe's lead. The last only came for his glass of rum-and-water, served with which by the aid of the negro, he passed the back of his hand across ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Amerikano. Amiability amindeco. Amiable afabla, aminda. Amicably pace. Amid meze. Amidst meze. Amity amikeco. Ammonia amoniako. Among inter. Amongst inter. Amorous amema. Amount sumo. Amphibious amfibia. Amphitheatre amfiteatro. Amphora amforo. Ample suficxa. Amplify grandigi. Amplitude amplekso. Amputate detrancxi. Amulet talismano. Amuse amuzi. Anagram anagramo. Analogy analogio. Analysis analizo. Analyze analizi. Anarchy anarhxio. Anatomy anatomio. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... had never ventured beyond her depth. There was a flight of steps leading down to the water at the left of Edna's cottage to a little natural harbor behind the rock masses. No sandy beach was there. One dropped into sea green depths where only the amphibious could feel at home; but Edna was amphibious, and even Miss Lacey's shade hat, firmly tied beneath the chin, was sometimes seen to ride upon the wave as its owner indulged in a stately swim from one point of rock to another. Her mouth and nose on these occasions were lifted from the waters in ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... as to money matters, served us nothing. It was easier to get scholars than to get much if anything for teaching them. Yet neither was the former, in some respects, so easy as might have been expected. The offspring of man, in that locality, may be regarded as in some measure amphibious. Boys and girls equally, if not already in the sea, were, like young turtles, sure to be pointing towards it with an instinct too intense to err. I never met, indeed, with a race of beings believed, or even suspected ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... we went to another, where I furnished myself with cloves, cinnamon, and other spices. As we sailed from this island, we saw a tortoise twenty cubits in length and breadth. We observed also an amphibious animal like a cow, which gave milk; its skin is so hard, that they usually make bucklers of it. I saw another, which had the shape and colour ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Mr. McCarthy's art) has specially formed and endowed him for the amphibious sport indicated above, and has provided him with an excellent nose, an almost waterproof coat, the sporting instincts of a true son of Erin, and, above all, a disposition full of good sense; he is high-couraged, and at the same time adaptable to the highest degree of perfection in training. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... knowledge of the subject. I will state the contents of the book: 1. Of the naturalia in general, and their divisions into three kingdoms. 2. Of organised bodies in general. 3. Of animals in general. 4. Of the mammalia. 5. Birds. 6. Amphibious. 7. Fishes. 8. Insects. 9. Worms. 10. Plants. 11. Of minerals in general. 12. Of stones and earthy fossils. 13. Of mineral salts. 14. Combustible minerals. 15. Of metals. 16. Petrifactions. At the end there is an alphabetical index, so that it is at ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... at their idle hours of a hardy throng of fishermen in red baize shirts, oilcloth trousers and boots of brown leather covering the whole leg—true seven-league boots, but fitter to wade the ocean than walk the earth. The wearers seemed amphibious, as if they did but creep out of salt water to sun themselves; nor would it have been wonderful to see their lower limbs covered with clusters of little shellfish such as cling to rocks and old ship-timber over which the tide ebbs and flows. When their fleet of boats was weather-bound, the butchers ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bare strand Of hillocks heaped with ever-shifting sand, Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds, Such as from earth's embrace ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... the early ages of the Earth, land and water had not yet distinctly separated, huge misshapen amphibious creatures walked the trunk-less forests growing on the oozing silt. Thus do the passions of the dim ages of the immature mind, as disproportionate and curiously shaped, haunt the unending shades of its trackless, nameless wildernesses. ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... his apprehension that the Honourable Johns and Honourable Georges would come in a sort of amphibious costume, half-morning, half-evening, satin neck-handkerchiefs, frock-coats, primrose gloves, and polished boots; and that, being so dressed, they would decline riding at the quintain, or taking part in any of the athletic games which ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... doubled the promontory behind which the canoe had passed, and found ourselves in an extensive gulf, which narrowed as it entered the land, and resembled the mouth of a river. We did not hesitate to follow its course. We went round the bay, but found no traces of man, but numerous herds of the amphibious animal, called sometimes the sea-lion, the sea-dog, or the sea-elephant, or trunked phoca: modern voyagers give it the last name. These animals, though of enormous size, are gentle and peaceful, unless roused by the cruelty of man. They were in such ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... operations to land areas (page 63), indicate the importance which may attach to immediate availability, with a naval force, in addition to its own air strength, of a proper complement of land forces (with appropriate air strength) which are organized, equipped, and trained for amphibious operations. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... to numbers of sea-calves, seals, and sea-elephants. The taking of those amphibious animals either on land or from the sea is profitable, and may lead to a trade which will bring a large number of vessels into ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... very low computation there are 25,000,000 who are on the border-land, who are scarcely ever in a position to properly obtain for themselves and for their families the barest necessities of existence. I do not say that they are wholly submerged, but they pass a sort of amphibious existence, being part of the time under water and part of the time on land,—some part of their life being spent in the most abject poverty, and some part of it in absolute starvation—positively for the time ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... are in the hottest parts of Ceylon. In the neighbourhood of lakes, swamps, and extensive plains, the buffalo exists in large herds; wallowing in the soft mire, and passing two-thirds of his time in the water itself, he may be almost termed amphibious. ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... other side, where he masticated his breakfast, at his leisure. Three alligators inhabit this pond, and being regarded as "fetishes," or charmed and sacred creatures, are never injured by the natives. On their part, the amphibious monsters seem to cherish amicable feelings towards the human race, and allow children to bathe and sport in the pond, without injury or molestation. The reptile that I saw was seven or eight feet long, with formidable ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... add to his misfortune, the pond was at that time neither ice nor water; for a sudden thaw had commenced the day before, accompanied by a copious fall of snow. Tommy, therefore, as soon as he had recovered his footing, floundered on through mud and water and pieces of floating ice, like some amphibious animal to the shore; sometimes his feet slipped, and down he tumbled, and then he struggled up again, shaking the water from his hair and clothes. Now his feet stuck fast in the mud, and now, by a desperate effort, he disengaged himself with the loss of both his shoes; ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... water, bright as tropical sun at 2.30 P.M. could make it was the foliage on the shore. Numbers of children and boys were playing in the water or running about on the rocks and sands, and there were several men about, all of course naked, and as they lead an amphibious life they find it very convenient. They work little; breadfruit trees, cocoa-nut trees, and bananas grow naturally, and the yam and taro cultivations are weeded and tended by the women. They have nothing to do but eat, drink, and sleep, and lie on the warm coral rock, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from its extreme lowness, at a distance of more than eight miles from the ship's deck, its presence is made known hours before it is sighted by vast clouds of amphibious birds, most of which all day long hover about the sea in its vicinity, and return to their rookeries on the island at sunset. On one occasion, when the vessel in which I was then serving was quite twenty miles from the land, we were unable ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... civilised populations, and its civilised. The two worlds are conterminous, and just as cultivated flowers and civilised people are mutually in touch, here you would find poisonous plants giving shelter to poisonous life, and the amphibious giving home to ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... figures and stranger tones; some craving his charity, some snatching away his luggage, and at the same time bidding him "never trouble himself," and "never fear." A scramble in the boat and on shore for bags and parcels began, and an amphibious fight betwixt men, who had one foot on sea and one on land, was seen; and long and loud the battle of trunks and portmanteaus raged! The vanquished departed, clinching their empty hands at their opponents, and swearing inextinguishable ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... diligently slow, The firm connected bulwark seems to grow; Spreads its long arms amidst the wat'ry roar, Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore. 290 While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile, Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile: The slow canal, the yellow blossomed vale, The willow tufted bank, the gliding sail, The crowded mart, the cultivated plain,— 295 A new creation ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... larger and finer flavoured than any I had seen before, and was, in the opinion of most on board, the highest luxury the sea afforded us. The shell-fish are, muscles, cockles, scallops, cray-fish, and many other sorts, all such as are to be found in every other part of the coast. The only amphibious animals are seals: These are to be found in great numbers about this bay on the small rocks and ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... still denied the solar glow 'T were bliss ecstatic To be amphibious—but O, To be aquatic! We're worms, men say, o' the dust, and they That faith are firm of. O, then, be just: show me some dust To ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... and there's a gentleman at the hotel would accommodate us. They're inside." She rose, and moved toward the door, waving him to follow. Her slow, clumsy body and chinless, full-lidded head reminded him of a turtle; she gave a still deeper amphibious impression—there was something markedly cold-blooded, inhuman, deleted, in her incongruous, gaudy bulk—an impression of a low, primitive organism, the subtle smell of ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... shouted a few insults, then settled down to a quiet conversation. Fasimba was garbed in the same type of hideous and fear-inspiring outfit as Ch'aka, differing only in unimportant details. Instead of a conch, his head was encased in the skull of one of the amphibious rosmaroj, brightened up with some extra tusks and horns. The differences between the two men were all minor, and mostly a matter of decoration or variation of weapon design. They were obviously slave masters ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... From this amphibious, ill-born mob began, That vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman. The customs, sirnames, languages, and manners, Of all these nations, are their own explainers; Whose relics are so lasting and so strong, They've left a Shiboleth upon our tongue; By which, with easy search, you may distinguish ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... cumbrous, disproportioned weight Through quaternary marsh and stagnant fen; Or watched the ichthyosaurus plow the seas, Churning the waters till the glistening foam Rode on the greenish undulating waves; And huge saurian and reptilian shapes Amphibious and pelagic, swim and crawl, Cleaving the waters with tremendous strokes, Writhing with foul contortions in disport, Splashing and laving in the thermal seas Of the remote and prehistoric past; Thou ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... the remains of aquatic and amphibious animals appear to confirm the conclusion drawn from vegetable fossils, that a climate of temperature as elevated as that now found in the tropics, once extended into high northern latitudes. It has been seen that the fossil remains ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... navigation were my favourite subjects; and I also developed a very fair amount of talent with my pencil. Athletics I especially excelled in; and by the time I had been three years at the school I had become almost amphibious. It affords me particular pleasure to reflect that, notwithstanding my previous total want of training, I was, from the very outset of my school career, an especial favourite with my fellow-pupils, never having had more than one quarrel ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... the fatigue, as time went on, became excessive; and in that preserve of sharks, fear hunted them. Again and again, Francois, the half-breed, would have desisted and gone down; but the woman, whole blood of an amphibious race, still supported him with cheerful words. I am reminded of a woman of Hawaii who swam with her husband, I dare not say how many miles, in a high sea, and came ashore at last with his dead body in her arms. It was about five in the evening, after nine hours' ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are covered by a membrane, so that no ray of light can enter and they can never see. Such eyes, without the function of sight, are found in several species of moles and mice which live underground, in serpents and lizards, in amphibious animals (proteus, caecilia) and in fishes; also in numerous invertebrate animals which pass their lives in the dark, as do many ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... a small frame building fronting on the main street of the village, at a point where the street was intersected by one of the several creeks meandering through the town, cooling the air, providing numerous swimming-holes for the amphibious small boy, and furnishing water-power for grist-mills and saw-mills. The rear of the building rested on long brick pillars, built up from the bottom of the steep bank of the creek, while the front was level with the street. This was the office ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... big enough for a trio and their traps, weighs only seventy-five pounds. When the rapid passes into a cataract, when the wall of rock across the stream is impregnable in front, it can be taken in the flank by an amphibious birch. The navigator lifts his canoe out of water, and bonnets himself with it. He wears it on head and shoulders, around the impassable spot. Below the rough water, he gets into his elongated chapeau and floats away. Without such vessel, agile, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... into our money-getting speculations, those freaks of the funds that leave many a man with one unfunded coat. The Thames tunnel is too amphibious an affair to be included in the number; but the ship canal project, the bridge-building mania, and the penchant for working mines by steam, evidently belong to them. The fashion even extends to royalty, since our good King builds a fishing-temple, and dines ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... weather-beaten; a deep scar, as if from the slash of a cutlass, had almost divided his nose, and made a gash in his upper lip, through which his teeth shone like a bulldog's. A mop of iron-gray hair gave a grisly finish to this hard-favored visage. His dress was of an amphibious character. He wore an old hat edged with tarnished lace, and cocked in martial style on one side of his head; a rusty[1] blue military coat with brass buttons; and a wide pair of short petticoat trousers,—or rather breeches, for they were gathered up at the knees. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... particular, led to several of Swift's liveliest poetical effusions, while, on the other hand, he was equally active in galling, by his satire, Smedley, and other Whig beaux esprits, who, during this amphibious administration, sought the favour of a literary Lord-Lieutenant, by literary offerings and poetical adulation. These pieces, with one or two connected with the same subject, are here thrown together, as they seem to reflect light ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Tom was now quite amphibious, and what is better still, he was clean. For the first time in his life he felt how comfortable it was to have nothing on him but himself. But he only enjoyed it; he did not know it, or think about it; just as you enjoy life and health, and yet never think ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... real estate as anything. It's kind of amphibious; half real estate certainly,—more'n half when the tide ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... from one wonder to another of the village, I was ushered by my guide into the grounds and gardens of Mynheer Broekker, another mighty cheese-manufacturer, worth eighty thousand guilders a year. I had repeatedly been struck with the similarity of all that I had seen in this amphibious little village to the buildings and landscapes on Chinese platters and tea-pots; but here I found the similarity complete; for I was told that these gardens were modeled upon Van Bramm's description of those of Yuen min Yuen, in ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... wholly unspoilt and untouched by what is bad in the modern spirit, or that presents so little unloveliness and squalor in its more out-of-the-way corners as Bruges. Bruges, of course, like Venice, and half a dozen towns in Holland, is a strangely amphibious city that is intersected in every direction, though certainly less persistently than Venice, by a network of stagnant canals. On the other hand, if it never rises to the splendour of the better parts of Venice—the ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... a charter is not difficult to understand. That amphibious colony, consisting of mainland, islands, and a large body of water, was inhabited by "poor despised peasants," as Governor Brenton described them, "living remote in the woods" and subject to the "envious and subtle contrivances ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... looks the nymph whom wretched arts adorn, Betray'd by man, then left for man to scorn; Whose cheek in vain assumes the mimic rose, While her sad eyes the troubled breast disclose; Whose outward splendour is but folly's dress, Exposing most, when most it gilds distress. Here joyless roam a wild amphibious race, With sullen woe display'd in every face; Who, far from civil arts and social fly, And scowl at strangers with suspicious eye. Here too the lawless merchant of the main Draws from his plough th' intoxicated swain; Want only claim'd the labour of the day, ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... trees Said to the winds that touched their leafy keys; Who saw so keenly and so well could paint The village-folk, with all their humors quaint,— The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan, Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown,— The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown,— The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale, And the loud straggler levying his black mail,— Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, All that lies buried under fifty years. To thee, as is most fit, I bring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... these depressions shells proper both to running and stagnant water may be preserved, and quadrupeds may be mired. The latest and uppermost deposit of the series will be loam or brick-earth, with land and amphibious shells (Helix and Succinea), while below will follow strata containing freshwater shells, implying continuous submergence; and lowest of all in most sections will be the coarse gravel accumulated by a current of considerable ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... the attack; but the First Sea Lord did not agree, nor did Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson, nor Admiral Sir Henry Jackson. So it was decided to wait for the army, and some satire has been directed at Mr. Churchill and those other "acknowledged experts in the technicalities of amphibious warfare," Mr. Balfour and Mr. Asquith, who were inclined to share his views. The verdict of the Dardanelles Commission was that, "Had the attack been renewed within a day or two there is no reason to suppose that the proportion of casualties ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... "beast-footed" ), while those of the second order, which had three toes, are called the Ornithopods (or "bird-footed"). Each of them then gave birth to an order of quadrupeds. In the spreading waters and rich swamps of the later Triassic some of the Theropods were attracted to return to an amphibious life, and became the vast, sprawling, ponderous Sauropods, the giants in a world of giants. On the other hand, a branch of the vegetarian Ornithopods developed heavy armour, for defence against the carnivores, and became, under the burden of its weight, the quadrupedal and monstrous Stegosauria ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... in which when they find any of their fellow-creatures impounded, they conclude that they have a full right of making them pay at their own discretion for their deliverance: to say the truth, whether it be that men who live on the sea-shore are of an amphibious kind, and do not entirely partake of human nature, or whatever else may be the reason, they are so far from taking any share in the distresses of mankind, or of being moved with any compassion for them, that they look upon them as blessings ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... all but amphibious, and reminded me of the seal at the Jardin des Plantes. He really seemed to spend most of the afternoon under water, coming up to breathe now and then at unexpected moments, with a stone in his mouth that he had picked up from the slimy bottom ten or twelve feet ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... star formed a separate garden, where there could be seen elephants, buffaloes, camels, dromedaries, stags, and kangaroos grazing; handsome and substantial cages held tigers, bears, leopards, lions, hyenas, etc; and swans and rare aquatic birds and amphibious animals sported in basins surrounded by iron gratings. In this menagerie I specially remarked a very extraordinary animal, which his Majesty had ordered brought to France, but which had died the day before it was to have started. This animal was from Poland, and was called a 'curus'; it was ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Sandwich islands (Kanackas, as they are called) are, without doubt, the most expert watermen in the world. Their performances in swimming and diving are so extraordinary, that they may almost be considered amphibious in their natures and instincts. Water appears to be as much their natural element as the land. They have straight black hair, good features, and an amiable and intelligent expression of countenance. Their complexion resembles ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... gentleman, possessed a couple of immense dogs, male and female, half Newfoundland, half mastiff, which were celebrated for their sagacity, courage, and high-training. They were, in the most comprehensive sense, amphibious, and their home being near the sea, they spent many hours daily in ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... possession. One shape they put on, is that of an animal human above the waist, yet terminating below in the tail and fins of a fish, but the most favourite form is that of the larger seal or Haaf-fish; for, in possessing an amphibious nature, they are enabled not only to exist in the ocean, but to land on some rock, where they frequently lighten themselves of their sea-dress, resume their proper shape, and with much curiosity examine the nature of the upper world belonging to the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... spiritual counsellor of his people. A striking case in point is that of the venerable Parson Eaton, who resided in a lonely seafaring district on the coast of Maine, and preached to a congregation who lived the amphibious life of farmers and fishermen. The town ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... with contempt, having myself observed that when an alligator, in a river, comes under an overhanging bough of a tree, the monkeys, in a state of alarm and distraction, crowd to the extremity, and, chattering and trembling, approach nearer and nearer to the amphibious monster that waits to devour them as they drop, which their fright and number renders almost unavoidable. These alligators likewise occasion the loss of many inhabitants, frequently destroying the people ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... seeds far and wide until the whole earth had become covered with green pastures, or lay dark under the shadow of the big trees. But some of the fishes too had begun to leave the sea, and they had learned how to breathe with lungs as well as with gills. We call such creatures amphibious, which means that they are able to live with equal ease on the land and in the water. The first frog who crosses your path can tell you all about the pleasures of the double existence ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... elder poets sacrificed the passion and passionate flow of poetry to the subtleties of intellect and to the stars of wit; the moderns to the glare and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and heterogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious something, made up, half of image, and half of abstract [5] meaning. The one sacrificed the heart to the head; the other both heart and head ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... place, we hired a fishing-boat to convey us to the island of St. Marguerite. It was impossible to help being diverted by the uncouth appearance of our new conductors, which was two or three degrees wilder than that of poor Murat's amphibious subjects: ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... conspicuously to label him for all time to come? To be short, then, a whale is A SPOUTING FISH WITH A HORIZONTAL TAIL. There you have him. However contracted, that definition is the result of expanded meditation. A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not a fish, because he is amphibious. But the last term of the definition is still more cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost any one must have noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, or up-and-down tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the tail, though ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... covered with the snows of winter, or when dried up in the summer sun; but even then a thaw or rain made them all but impassable. The rains of autumn and the thaws of spring converted them into a mass of liquid mud, such as amphibious animals might delight to revel in. Except an occasional legislative grant of a few thousand pounds for the whole Province, which was ill- expended, and often not accounted for at all, the great leading roads, as well as all other roads, depended, in ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... methinks, and diligently slow, The firm connected bulwark seems to grow; Spreads its long arms amid the watery roar, Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore. While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile, Sees an amphibious world before him smile; The slow canal, the yellow blossom'd vale, The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail, The crowded mart, the cultivated plain, A new creation rescued from ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... they killed these turtles was called the Galapagar. They fed them in a curious manner: at night there was thrown for them, into a large dry tank, the carcase of a cow or a calf; and such was the voracity of the amphibious animals, that, in the morning, nothing remained of these carcases ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... courts was a sort of amphibious magistrate, a sort of bat of the judicial order, related to both the rat and the bird, the judge ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... daring, saving fisherfolk, father, mother, boys and girls, each sacrificing to the rest, each sacrificed to by all, and all devoted to their neighbors. Grand it was and blissful, and the borders of the great sea alone seemed fit place for such beings amphibious of time and eternity. Their very toils and dangers were but additional atmospheres to press their souls together. It was glorious! Why had she been born an earl's daughter, never to look a danger in the face, never to have a chance of a true life—that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... shore'd look good to me. I ain't what you might call aquatic by nature—I ain't even amphibious." Alice laughed and the sound was music to the Texan's ears. "That's right, laugh," he hastened to say, and the girl noticed that the cheerfulness was not forced, "I've never heard you laugh much owin' to the fact that our acquaintance has been what you ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... death at his hands, though it should be by drowning. But as she fell into the water she became a sheldrake duck." The Passamaquoddies, who relate this story, have hardly yet passed out of the stage of thought in which no steadfast boundary is set between men and the lower animals. The amphibious maiden, who dwelt in the bottom of the river, could not be drowned by jumping into the stream; and it is evident that she only resumes her true aquatic form in escaping from her husband, who, it should ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... same—the same! Annually about one circus ventured in, and vanished, and was gone, even as a passing trumpet-blast; the usual rainy season swelled the "Crick," the driftage choking at "the covered bridge," and backing water till the old road looked amphibious; and crowds of curious townfolk struggled down to look upon the watery wonder, and lean awestruck above it, and spit in it, and ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... There are, of amphibious animals, green turtles, hawk's bills, and loggerheads, which grow to a great size, some of them weighing several hundred pounds, land turtles, fresh water turtles, alligators, extremely voracious, and ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... in a state of inundation, under the discipline of mops and brooms and scrubbing brushes; and the good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water,—insomuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers, ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... who better understood its habits. He knew they were amphibious, and that, where the dugong was found, land could not be a long way off. He said this, once more arousing his companions by ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... feet in length, and two feet or more in breadth at its huge middle. It was queerly but not brilliantly spotted, and its head was very nearly that of the anaconda of to-day. Already the sea-serpent had become amphibious. It had already acquired the knowledge it has transmitted to the anaconda, that it might leave the stream, and, from some vantage point upon the shore, find more surely a victim than in the waters of the sea or river. This monster serpent was but waiting for the advent of any land animal, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... philander, anthropos philanthropy *Archos chief, primitive archaic, architect *Astron star asterisk, disaster Autos self autograph, automatic, authentic *Barvs heavy baritone, barites *Biblos book Bible, bibliomania *Bios life biology, autobiography, amphibious *Cheir hand chiropody, chirurgical, surgeon *Chilioi a thousand kilogram, kilowatt *Chroma color chromo, achromatic Chronos time chronic, anachronism *Cosmos world, order cosmopolitan, microcosm *Crypto hide cryptogam, cryptology *Cyclos ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... about one hundred yards across, their work became easy. Carried along at a speed of two or three miles an hour, they now saw that the water and the banks they passed were literally alive with reptiles and all sorts of amphibious creatures, while winged lizards sailed from every overhanging branch into the water as they approached. They noticed also many birds similar to storks and cranes, about the size of ostriches, standing on logs in the water, whose ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... first day of fighting at Arcola (November 15th) closed on the strange scene of two armies encamped on dykes, exhausted by an almost amphibious conflict, like that waged by the Dutch "Beggars" in their war of liberation against Spain. Though at Arcola the republicans had been severely checked, yet further west Massena had held his own; and the French movement as a whole had compelled Alvintzy to suspend any advance ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... their charred and ruined habitations by the Brenta and the Piave. The sea alone does not constitute their safety. If that were all, the pirate ships of the Vandal Genseric might repeat upon their poor dwellings all the terror of Attila. But it is in their amphibious life, in that strange blending of land and sea which is exhibited by the lagunes, that their safety lies. Only experienced pilots can guide a vessel of any considerable draught through the mazy channels of deep water which intersect ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... survey kits, and frequently lying down to die. Then if a bit of the future, too, could for a moment be unveiled, and one might watch the first ship glide majestically and silently into the canal and away into the jungle like some amphibious monster. ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... the most lubberly of the cutter's crew; they then gave him ten yards' law, when they started in chase, shouting amongst the bushes, and switching each other like the veriest schoolboys. I had walked some distance along the beach, pelting the amphibious little creatures, half crab, half lobster, called soldiers, which kept shouldering their large claws, and running out and in their little burrows, as the small ripple twinkled on the sand in the rising sun, when two men—of—wars boats, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... On land generally—for some forms are amphibious:—Beasts (Carnivora), cattle (Ungulata, &c.), and other things that creep on the ground (the smaller and ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... house, as we saw it the next morning, was a good-sized waterside farmhouse, wide-spreading and low-roofed. The place had a sort of amphibious appearance, as if depending for its maintenance equally upon the land and the water. The house stood a little distance back from the narrow beach, and in its front yard a net was hung to dry and to be mended; a small boat, in course of repair, ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... many ways like the beginning. Soeren was like the original man in this also, that he too was amphibious. He understood everything, farming, fishing and handicraft. But he was not sharp enough to do more than just earn a bare living, there was never anything to spare. This was the difference between the ascent and the descent. Moreover, he—like so many of the family—found ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... least appearance of an attack on his person. The well-known partiality of these dogs for the water, in which they appear as if in their proper element, diving and keeping their heads under the surface for a considerable time, seems to give them some connexion with the class of amphibious animals. At the same time, the several instances of their superior sagacity, and the essential services which they have been frequently known to render to humanity, give them a distinguished rank in the scale of the brute creation. I will mention ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse |
