"Wasp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suggestions to the contrary, it has appeared that he conformed to his instructions, promoted the public interest, and gave entire satisfaction to the government. In 1811, he was transferred to the command of the sloop-of-war Wasp, mounting eighteen twenty-four pound carronades, and dispatched, in the spring of 1812, with communications to the courts of St. Cloud and St. James. Before he returned, war had been declared against Great Britain. He refitted his ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... stream, and laid, (might it not have been thought?) for a hopeless eternity, in the dark ooze, the most despised, forgotten, and feeble of all earth's atoms; incapable of any use or change; not fit, down there in the diluvial darkness, so much as to help an earth wasp to build its nest, or feed the first fibre of a lichen; what would it have thought, had it been told that one day, knitted into a strength as of imperishable iron, rustless by the air, infusible by the flame, out of the substance ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... love of fable and adventure is sufficiently testified by the pretty numerous fragments which still remain (Pauly). Demetrius Phalereus, quoted by Pearce, quotes a grandiloquent description of the wasp taken from Kleitarchus, "feeding on the mountainside, her ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... Mary to Emma, O now do I see Why you are more loved, and more happy than me; And we're like mama's tale of the Wasp ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... monolayer; epitaxial deposition[Engin]. thinness &c. adj.; tenuity; emaciation, macilency[obs3], marcor|. shaving, slip &c. (filament) 205; thread paper, skeleton, shadow, anatomy, spindleshanks[obs3], lantern jaws, mere skin and bone. middle constriction, stricture, neck, waist, isthmus, wasp, hourglass; ridge, ghaut[obs3], ghat[obs3], pass; ravine &c. 198. narrowing, coarctation[obs3], angustation[obs3], tapering; contraction &c. 195. V. be narrow &c. adj.; narrow, taper, contract &c. 195; render narrow &c. adj; waste away. Adj. narrow, close; slender, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... purring against grandmother's stool, had jumped on the window-sill in pursuit of a belated wasp, and Sarah, rushing to the rescue of her flowers, cuffed the animal soundly and placed her in grandfather's lap. He was a lover of cats—a harmless fancy which was a source of unceasing annoyance to ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... more'n a hundred pounds, and must be fifty years old, and he's got curvature of the spine, and he's able seaman, if you please, on the Elsinore. And worse than all that, he puts it over on you; he's nasty, he's mean, he's a viper, a wasp. He ain't afraid of anything because he knows you dassent hit him for fear of croaking him. Oh, he's a pearl of purest ray serene, if anybody should slide down a backstay and ask you. If you fail to identify him any other way, his ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the end of the street. On the snow that bound the horizon, his tall and wasp-like uniformed figure outlined itself; he walked, knees apart, with that motion particular to soldiers who are anxious not to ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... mania, will see it filling every mill-head in England, to the torment of all millers. Young ladies are assured that the only plant for their vivariums is a sprig of anacharis, for which they pay sixpence—the market value being that of a wasp, flea, or other scourge of the human race; and when the vivarium fails, its contents, Anacharis and all, are tost into the nearest ditch; for which the said young lady ought to be fined five pounds; and would be, if Governments governed. What ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... passages is there any wonder that it is hard to persuade women that men do not admire "wasp" waists? How are they to know that the "jimp middle" of the ballads was in its jimpness in proportion to the shoulders? The trouble is, that the early rhymesters have used up the only side of the question capable of poetical treatment. One cannot sing of the reverse: no poet could ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... was early directed to send a ship of war to Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, to receive Mr. Washburn and his family and remove them from a situation which was represented to be endangered by faction and foreign war. The Brazilian commander of the allied invading forces refused permission to the Wasp to pass through the blockading forces, and that vessel returned to its accustomed anchorage. Remonstrance having been made against this refusal, it was promptly overruled, and the Wasp therefore resumed her errand, received Mr. Washburn and his ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to feed on the young foliage and grow rapidly into the conspicuous cream, yellow and black 'looper' caterpillars mentioned in a previous chapter (p. 60). These, when fully-grown, spin among the twigs of the food-plant a light cocoon, in which the black and yellow-banded wasp-like pupa spends its short summer term before the emergence of ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... rectors and earls and dukes had crossed the ocean in the same ship and had been scattered abroad over Manitoba and the Northwest Territories to be instructed in agricultural pursuits by the honest granger, and incidentally to furnish nutriment for the ever-ready mosquito or wasp, who regarded all Old Country men ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... as if a wasp had stung him, and there is no guessing what his reply might have been to this seemingly innocent observation, had not a gallant horseman at that instant entered the court, and, dismounting like the others, gave his horse to the charge ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... good many adjourned to the drawing-room, Captain and Mrs. Ray, the Strachys, Rutherfords, &c. We had a scientific experiment with the shadow of the moon. Mr. Ray told a curious story of a wasp. He saw it advance slowly to a great spider, which the wasp apparently completely mesmerised, and then the wasp carried him off to a little house he had made, and deposited the spider next an egg, then another egg, and again another spider, till there was a long ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... easier to such knowing adepts in guilt than to transfer to his charge any deed of violence one of their own gang had committed—heap damning circumstances round him—privily apprise justice—falsely swear away his life. In short, the man was in their way as a wasp that has blundered into an ants' nest; and, while frightened at the size of the intruder, these honest ants were resolved to get him out of their citadel alive or dead. Probable it was that Jasper Losely would meet with his deserts at ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... misery. When the entertainment had become nearly unbearable, he conceived the idea of gripping them between his fingers and putting them out of commission. He succeeded with many of them, but at great cost, for, as he couldn't see the wasp, he was as likely to take hold of the wrong end of him as he was the right; then the dying wasp gave him a punch ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... the market is the wasp gun. In theory it is something like a letter clip; you pull the trigger and the upper and lower plates snap together with a suddenness which would surprise any insect in between. The trouble will be to get him in the right place before firing. But I can see that a lot of fun can be ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... well-known species, while the additions made to the Fossorial group contain many of great beauty and rarity. A new species belonging to the tribe of Solitary Wasps, Odynerus clavicornis, is perhaps the most interesting insect in the collection; this Wasp has clavate antennae, the flagellum being broadly dilated towards the apex, convex above and concave beneath. I am not acquainted with any other insect belonging to the Vespidious group which exhibits such ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... Prioress, blushing to her white hair, bent forward and whispered in the Abbot's ear words at which he sprang up as though a wasp ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... Because he's my friend, I suppose? You look down on him just because he's a hard worker, and of some use in the world—not a dandified, conventional, wasp-waisted idiot like Cecil Reeve! Perhaps you ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... back of one hand made that purpose only too clear to Shann, and he retreated hurriedly from the vicinity of the excavation. They had found an earth-wasp's burrow and were hunting grubs, naturally arousing the rightful inhabitants ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... quite ready for a quarrel, but Theophilus, contrary to my expectations, did not choose to take any notice of my imprudent speech. Not that he wanted personal courage. Like the wasp, he could, when unprovoked, attack others, and sting with tenfold malice when he felt or fancied an affront. His forbearance on the present occasion, I attributed to the very handsome riding-dress in which he had encased his ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... the cub had spent three quarters of his time in eating, but since yesterday morning he had not swallowed so much as a bug. He was completely empty, and the object he saw hanging to the bush set every salivary gland in his mouth working. It was a wasp's nest. Many times in his young life he had seen Noozak, his mother, go up to nests like that, tear them down, crush them under her big paw, and then invite him to the feast of dead wasps within. For ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... Romans knew better; to keep people quiet they filled their bellies. Those fools—" he jerked his head backwards with disgust; I thought, of the shawls and the high combs and the hair gleaming black under lace and the wasp-waists of the young men and the insolence of black eyes above the flashing wheels of the carriages, "—those fools give only circuses. Do you people in the outside world realize that we in Andalusia starve, that we have starved for generations, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... 'at they dinna nip you, for haein' a wid leg," says Sandy, as raised as a wasp. "Awa' oot o' that, an' mind your ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... top offers a weak spot which makes it possible for the insect to reach the vein of least resistance at once, without cutting away through the hard ligneous wall. To many, therefore, of the Bee and Wasp tribe, whether honey-gatherers or hunters, one of these dry stalks is a valuable discovery when its diameter matches the size of its would-be inhabitants; and it is also an interesting subject of study to the entomologist who, in the winter, pruning-shears in hand, can gather in the hedgerows ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... as asteroids go, but about it clung a silvery mist of atmosphere. Deeper flashes through the mist betokened water, and green patches hinted of rich vegetation. The space-patroller circled the little world knowledgeably, like a wasp buzzing around an apple. In the control room, by the forward ports, the Martian skipper addressed his ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... egg sandwiches and marmalade sandwiches, and cold minced-collop sandwiches, he pricked forth into the wilderness, making for the country inhabited by the Yellow Dwarf. The princess was glad he was riding, for she privately accompanied him in the disguise of a wasp; and a wasp, of course, could not have kept up with him ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... Third The New House March The Cuckoo Over the Hills Home The Hollow Wood Wind and Mist The Unknown Bird The Lofty Sky After Rain Digging But these things also April The Barn The Barn and the Down The Child on the Cliffs Good-night The Wasp Trap July A Tale Parting Lovers That Girl's Clear Eyes The Child in the Orchard The Source The Mountain Chapel First known when lost The Word These things that Poets said Home Aspens An Old Song There was a Time Ambition No one cares ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... excitement of the law courts, there occurs the following episode, that has for its basis the activity of the Athenians at the battle of Plataea. We learn from this episode that the appellation, the "Attic Wasp," had its origin in the venomous persistence with which the Athenians, swarming like wasps, stung the Persians in their retreat, after the defeat of Mardonius. Occurring in a popular satirical comedy, it also shows how readily any allusion to ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... anything like it before. I suspect it arose from the help I've been giving the grade teachers in their nature work. They are trying to teach the children something, and half the instructors don't know a blue jay from a king-fisher, a beech leaf from an elm, or a wasp from ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... you wish me to tell you where you can find your old faded doll, with a waist just like a wasp, and an old blue sacque—not a bit of powder in ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thirteen hundred miles southeast of Great New York. I could do a good normal three-ninety in this fleet little Wasp, especially if I kept in the rarer air-pressures over the zero-height. The thousand-foot lane had a southward drift, this night. I was making now well over four hundred; I would reach Nareda ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... for half the day. In short, they are becoming more and more intimate, to the extremest degree; and, scorning the world, thank Heaven that they are mutually indispensable. Cannot we get away from this scurvy wasp's-nest of a Paris, thought they, and live to ourselves ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... hit him right in the middle of his starched shirt front. Like an infuriated wasp he rose from his seat to find the criminal; a plain little girl's face laughed into his; a labourer in his Sunday clothes and straw hat appeared, took her by the hand and smilingly expressed a hope that the child had not ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... a particularly intelligent lot. They were Diggers, so named on account of their habits of digging in the ground for roots, and the larva of various insects for food. Eggs of ants, and the maggots found in wasp's nests ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... wasp will soon sadly perceive, Who has feasted awhile on a plum; And, his thirst thinking now to relieve, For a sweet liquid ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the Wasp, issued at Nauvoo under Mormon editorship, had been succeeded by a larger one called the Neighbor, edited by John Taylor (afterward President of the church), who also had charge of the Times and Seasons. The Neighbor ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... midnight. No mail, passenger or freight flyers were scheduled to pass near there at that hour, and, save for some chance private craft, we would be undisturbed. The ransom gold was available to Hanley. He had said he would bring it in his personal Wasp. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... bath-tub, while the pastor opens out a new box of theological thunders and fills the air full of the sullen roar of sulphurous waves, licking the shores of eternity and swallowing up the great multitudes of the eternally lost; but when one little wasp, with a red-hot revelation, goes gently up the leg of that same man's pantaloons, leaving large, hot tracks whenever he stopped and sat down to think it over, you will see a sudden awakening and a revival that will ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the wind and that all animals talk like men on Christmas morning at a certain time. Children wore moles feet and pearl buttons around their necks to insure easy teething and had their legs bathed in a concoction of wasp nest and vinegar if they were slow about learning to walk. This was supposed to strengthen the weak limbs. It was a common occurence to see a child of two or three years still nursing at the mother's breast. Their masters encouraged the slaves to do this, thinking ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... on several occasions and she was a dangerous person to snub. Judah expressed it characteristically when he declared that anybody who "set out" to impose on Esther Tidditt would have as lively a time as a bare-footed man trying to dance a hornpipe on a wasp's nest. "She'll keep 'em hoppin' high, I tell ye," ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... think I'm clever enough! Well, suppose I try, and you set me right if I make mistakes. "How doth the great idle wasp—"' ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... compromise. The lawsuit will be ugly, and probably ruinous. He has a right to claim six years' arrears—that is above L100,000. Make yourself his father-in-law, and me his uncle-in-law; and, since we can't kill the wasp, we may at least soften the venom of ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the reason of this seems to be nothing else, but the corrosive penetrant liquor contain'd in the small baggs or bladders, upon which grow out those sharp Syringe-pipes, as I before noted; and very consonant to this, is the reason of the pain created by the sting of a Bee, Wasp, &c. as I elsewhere shew: For by the Dart, which is likewise a pipe, is made a deep passage into the skin, and then by the anger of the Fly, is his gally poisonous liquor injected; which being admitted among the sensible parts, and so mix'd with the humours or stagnating ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... wasp, I've seen ye do ut. I say there's nothin' better than the bay'nit, wid a long reach, a double twist av ye ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... spout being probed the gush of gas expelled a quantity of clay and thirty-five small spiders, representative of about six different species. The spout had been converted into a nursery and larder by a carnivorous wasp, for in addition to the moribund spiders stored for the sustenance of future grubs were several unhatched eggs. Such wasps are exceedingly common, some building "nests" as large as a tea-cup, the last compartment being fitted with an elegantly fashioned ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... know?" he cried. "The black old scamp had CARBONARO funds on a deposit - two hundred and eighty thousand; and of course he gambled it away on stocks. There was to have been a revolution in the Tridentino, or Parma; but the revolution is off, and the whole wasp's nest is after Huddlestone. We shall all be lucky if we can ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... house, or taken bite or sup in it for at least twenty years. And as for his behaviour to everybody round about—well, I can tell you all about that whenever you want to know! However, now they've stormed him—they've smoked him out like a wasp's nest. My goodness—he did buzz! Undershaw found a man badly hurt, lying on the road by the bridge—bicycle accident—run over too, I believe—and carried him into the Tower, willy-nilly!" The speaker chuckled. "Melrose ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... honour lay in me, From me by strong assault it is bereft. My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee, Have no perfection of my summer left, But robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft: In thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept, And suck'd the honey which ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... and she couldn't help smiling a little when she said it, "if you call her 'Bee,' don't make it the beginning of any new teasing by calling Rosy 'Wasp.'" ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... other types of law-breakers would ultimately be brought to justice. And if these but knew of the presence of this boy in his tower room, some dark night that tower would be rocked by an exploding bomb and the boy in his room would be shaken to earth like a young mud-wasp ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... knocked out of the cup are a light yellow at the base and green towards the middle and the point; the yellow part is that which has been covered by the cup. In the sward there is a small hole from out of which creeps a wasp at intervals; it is a nest, and some few of them are still at work. But their motions are slow and lack vivacity; before long, numbers must die, and already many have succumbed after crawling miserably on the ground which ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... and wretched, confined like the pith within the bark of the tree.... My voice is like a wasp imprisoned within a sack of skin and bone. ... My teeth rattle like the keys of an old musical instrument.... My face is a scarecrow.... There is a ceaseless buzzing in my ears—in one a spider spins his web, in the other a cricket chirps all night.... My catarrh, which causes a rattle in my ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... sting, with a dum dum point. We hurt all over; and the worst of it was, we hadn't really been stung yet and didn't know where it was going to hit us. Did you ever wait perfectly helpless while a large, taciturn wasp with a red-hot tail was looking ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... reason leads us to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in Nature, this same reason tells us, though we may easily err on both sides, that some contrivances are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of the insect by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he gave me his views on the brains and merits of many of the delegates, views full of wit and brilliant criticism, but when I had finished painting him I came under his kindly lash. He called me "a nasty little wasp," and he kept a "black book" for any of his lady friends who said the sketch was like him. In it their names were inscribed, and they were never to be spoken to again. With all his fun, Sir Henry was a deep thinker, and towered over the majority ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... ever to fulfill his promise to locate Boyd, that would have to come later. Quirk's horse catch delivered, the scouts were on the move again, on the Georgetown road, riding at a pace which suggested they must keep ahead of a boiling wasp's nest of Yankees. There was an embarrassment of blue-coat prisoners on the march between two lines of gray uniforms, and pockets of the enemy such as that at Fort Clay were left behind. The strike northward took ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... prove fatal. So may a pin scratch, if the blood of the subject be in bad enough condition. There is a well-substantiated case of a trained nurse who died from blood poisoning following a mosquito bite. Ant bite has resulted fatally, as has a single sting from the common wasp. No one, however, considers these everyday insects as "deadly." But substitute "scorpion" for "ant," and "centipede" for "wasp," and shrieks of dismay rise from the general throat. Yet perhaps there is no other variety of harmful creature ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... angler to succeed in it. The worm has to be cast up-stream rather like a fly, and the method is little inferior to fly-fishing in delicacy and difficulty. The other baits for trout, or rather the other baits which they will take sometimes, are legion. Wasp-grubs, maggots, caterpillars, small frogs, bread, there is very little the fish will not take. But except in rural districts little effort is made to catch trout by means less orthodox than the fly, minnow and worm, and the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... first encount'ring with a Wasp, He in his arms the fly doth clasp As though his breath he forth would grasp Him for Pigwiggen taking: "Where is ny wife, thou rogue?" quoth he; "Pigwiggen, she is come to thee; Restore her, or thou diest by me!" ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... rustic on the bank (whose sympathetic grins upset my chum almost as much as the wasps) to try some clay from the canal-side as a remedy. We were sceptical at first, but were subsequently astonished at the soothing effects of this novel panacea for wasp-stings. Here is a wrinkle for any of my readers who should happen to get stung by the ferocious ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes
... fold thy kindly care have found, The horned bull, tremendous, spurns the ground; The lordly lion has enough and more, The forest trembles at his very roar; Thou giv'st the ass his hide, the snail his shell, The puny wasp, victorious, guards his cell. Thy minions, kings defend, controul devour, In all th' omnipotence of rule and power: Foxes and statesmen subtle wiles ensure; The cit and polecat stink, and are secure: Toads ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... it by the strongest of all ties, that of religion. Most of all was this the case with Acadia, founded in hot and justifiable anger, and eager to justify its existence. Had Howe been a wary politician, he would have thought twice before stirring up such a wasp's nest, more especially as the {77} Baptists had hitherto been his faithful supporters. But Howe was both more and less than a wary politician, and when early in 1843 a private member brought in resolutions ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... namely, the Lord of Fulham. Whereunto the gentleman answered that he had been a poor freeholder in Fulham, before Don John came to be L. there, hoping also to be so, when he and all his brood (my Lady his daughter and all) should be gone. At the hearing of this speech, the wasp got my brother by the nose, which made him in his rage to affirm, that he would be L. of Fulham as long as he lived in despite of all England. Nay, soft there, quoth M. Madox, except her Majesty. I pray you, that is my meaning, call dumb John, and I tell thee Madox that thou art but a Jack ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... to be proud to wear the poet's double name, and was particularly great in all that author's plays that were usually performed, viz "Wasp," in Bartholomew Fair; "Corbaccio;" "Morose," in The Silent Woman; and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... marmalade or to make no marmalade at all. Personally I am inclined to think that the President of the Board of Agriculture will go further than this. I think that encouragement will be given to those who take the State Marmalade course to follow it up with a subsidiary or finishing course of wasp treatment. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... passionate tirade by simply shaking her head as a child does who hears the buzzing of a wasp and fears its sting; then, as they reached the bench, she said with ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... on a stool in the centre of the room. She was closely watched and kept without food for four-and-twenty hours. Doors and windows remained open to watch for the entrance of some of the devil's imps. These might come in the form of a fly, a wasp, a moth, or some other insect. The work of the watchers was to kill every insect that came into the room. But if one escaped, it was clear proof that this was one of the ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... 'Where on earth does this idiot put her liver?' Did you ever read of the frog who burst, trying to swell to an ox? Well, here is the rivalry reversed; Mrs. Vivian is a bag of bones in a balloon; she can machine herself into a wasp; but a fine young woman like you, with flesh and muscle, must kill yourself three or four times before you can make your body as meagre, hideous, angular, and unnatural as Vivian's. But all you ladies are mono-maniacs; one might as well talk sense ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... was, when they came to the point, what they should put down. If, indeed, they could have got hold of the ringleaders, the bishops of the Church, they would have tortured and smashed them con amore, as you would kill a wasp; and with the greater warmth and satisfaction, just because it was so difficult to get at them. Those bishops were a set of fellows as mischievous as they were cowardly; they would not come out and be killed, but they skulked in the desert, and hid in masquerade. ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Correspondent of 'the Field' records an experiment which he made with a wasp. 'Having,' he says, 'severed a wasp in two pieces, I found that the head and thorax with the uninjured wings retained full vitality.... It tried to fly, but evidently lacked the necessary balance through the loss of the abdomen. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... hour the trout ceased leaping at dark fly or moth, and could see only in the dim light the ghostly white miller? Did they know the comparative merits, as a tempting bait, of grasshopper, cricket, spider, or wasp; and could they, with bits of wool, tinsel, and feather, copy the real dipterous, hymenopterous, or orthopterous insect? And the birds: he knew them as do few ornithologists, by sight, by sound, by little ways and tricks of their own, ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... wasp seen in the season should always be killed. By so doing you secure to yourself good luck and freedom from enemies ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... devoutly borne, in bringing God closer to us, belongs to it, whether it be great or small; whether it be, according to the metaphor of an earlier portion of this psalm, 'a lion or an adder'; or whether it be a buzzing wasp or a mosquito. As long as anything troubles me, I may make it a means of bringing God ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sudden; to a wasp or two that had come foraging on Daisy's window-sill. But Dr. Sandford was at home there; and so explained the wasp's work and manner of life, with his structure and fitness for what he had to do, that Daisy was in utter delight; though her eyes sometimes opened upon Dr. Sandford ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... a long time no word was spoken. I watched my life run redly through the wasp waist of the transparent glass, then suddenly the sand ceased to flow, half in the upper bulb, half in ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... to the thorns near the centre of one of each pair, and not near the end, and it is not so active as the other species. It is also rather scarce; but when it does occur, it occupies the whole tree, to the exclusion of the other. The glands on the acacia are also frequented by a small species of wasp. I sowed the seeds of the acacia in my garden, and reared some young plants. Ants of many kinds were numerous; but none of them took to the thorns for shelter, nor the glands and fruit-like bodies for food; for, as I have already mentioned, the species that attend on the thorns are not found ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... said, when she had furnished the desired information. She brought out a piece of paper as she spoke, and passed it on to her friend behind the cover of her open desk. It was a fragment of one of Maysie's zoological drawing-sheets, evidently picked up out of the waste-paper basket—a wasp with wings outspread, showing the three divisions of an insect's body. The head was roughly altered so as to form a caricature of a human face, and above was printed, in letters that might have done credit to Maysie herself: "Miss E. in a tantrum," and below: "How ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... sobbed Frances. "She is like a wasp—all sting." After a long pause devoted to drying her eyes, she continued, "But it has not been much ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... longest slope, of which the angle was very steep. Down this the stone rushed like an arrow from a bow, till it reached the narrow waist of the bridge, whereof the general conformation bore some resemblance to that of a dead wasp lying on its back. Indeed, from where Leonard and Juanna stood, the span of ice at this point seemed to be no thicker than a silver thread, while Otter and the stone might have been a fly upon the thread. Now of a sudden Leonard distinctly saw the rock sledge and its living burden, which ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... some of you think it very ugly, and say you are afraid of it, but sensible children will not be frightened at a spider, because they will remember that they are very harmless little things, and have not got a sting as the wasp and bee have. They are very ugly, to be sure, but every ugly insect is not to be called a nasty creature, for some are very useful, notwithstanding their not being as handsome as others; and spiders are very useful too, although ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... to watch that, and it happened so often, that it was hard to imagine a windsor pear without a great gash where the sharp stones had cut into it; it was also natural to expect when you picked it up that there would be a cunning yellow wasp hidden somewhere about it, for all the little Hawthorns had always found it so except the baby, and she was too small to have any experience. Five little Hawthorns, without counting the baby, had looked out of the nursery ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... the beetle has the thorax and body densely hairy like the bee, and the legs are tufted in a manner most unusual in the order Coleoptera. Another Longicorn, Odontocera odyneroides, has the abdomen banded with yellow, and constricted at the base, and is altogether so exactly like a small common wasp of the genus Odynerus, that Mr. Bates informs us he was afraid to take it out of his net with his fingers for fear of being stung. Had Mr. Bates's taste for insects been less omnivorous than it was, the beetle's disguise might have saved it from his pin, as it had no doubt often ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... their work and wrapped themselves round Umbelazi's army as the nippers of a wasp close about a fly (why did not Umbelazi cut off those horns, I wondered), the Usutu bull began his charge. Twenty or thirty thousand strong, regiment after regiment, Cetewayo's men rushed up the slope, and there, near the crest of it, were met by Umbelazi's regiments ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... Here, on a rustic table, stood wine and a few delicacies,—while, by extending a hand, we could grasp the hanging pears and nectarines, still warm to the lip and luscious with sunshine, as we disputed possession with the envious wasp who had established ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... which thou, too, art the Hereditary High Priest that is to be. And meanwhile, I will sit here and watch, for my hour is not yet, and, by the help of the Gods, spin the web of Death wherein thou shalt catch and hold the wasp of Macedonia. ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... Hell's that?" Mr. Wix started as if a wasp had stung him, as the old charwoman's knock came at the private entrance alongside of the bar. He seemed very sensitive, always on ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Alexander, when Mr. Falconbridge had been the surgeon of her. Three came to me who had been ill-used in the voyage which followed, though she had then sailed under a new captain. Two applied to me from the Africa, who had been of her crew in the last voyage. Two from the Fly. Two from the Wasp. One from the Little Pearl, and three from the Pilgrim or Princess, when she ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... needle go in and out; and the dreary hum of the bees and the noise of the children's voices became a confused murmur in her ears, as she worked slowly and more slowly. Then the bees, the long-legged wasp-like fellows who make no honey, flew closer and closer to her head, droning. Then she grew more and more drowsy, and she laid her hand, with the stocking over it, on the edge of the table, and leaned her head upon ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... what he had come to see. So he asked a ruffianly looking wasp where the raising bee was. But the wasp, who was hurrying by, merely glanced at Buster ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... wishing nothing less than the death of the fair washerwoman of Portillon and often would cry out "I will eat her flesh! I will cook one of her breasts, and swallow it without sauce!" It was a tremendous hate of good constitution—a cardinal hate—a hate of a wasp or an old maid. It was all known hates moulded into one single hate, which boiled itself, concocted itself, and resolved self into an elixir of wicked and diabolical sentiments, warmed at the fire of the most flaming furnaces of hell—it was, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... has gone. In her place we have strong, capable, broad-minded women. Seldom do we hear of a woman fainting today, yet look back sixty years and recall the Lydia Languish females with long ringlets and wasp waists, who invariably carried smelling salts. I'm proud to belong to the women of today—healthy, strong, athletic, and brave—women who do and are not ashamed of it. Look at Aunt Susan. There's a woman who is an example. I hope I may amount to as much as she ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... and the wasp's sharp eyes had found him out; and then, quick as lightning, she darted down upon him, and pierced him with her sting. When the locust lay perfectly still, the wasp seized him and flew off. Arrived at her ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the sting of a wasp, but I could not resist them, and when some days later Martin called to take me to the Geographical Society, where his commander, Lieutenant —— was to give an account of their expedition, I could not find it in my heart to ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... scientific contemplation. As if a Martian should suddenly become visible to an astronomer, I found that one of the egg planets was inhabited. Perched upon the summit—quite near the north pole—was an insect, a wasp, much smaller than the egg itself. And as I looked, I saw it at the climax of its diminutive life; for it reared up, resting on the tips of two legs and the iridescent wings, and sunk its ovipositor deep into the crystalline ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... his happiness as he excavates the twig of a silver maple. Probably he has found the larvae which the wood wasp left there in the fall. The big hairy woodpecker flies across the clearing with a strident scream. Next to the crow and the jay he is the noisiest fellow in the winter woods. He hammers away at a decaying basswood and the chips which fall are an inch and a half long. His ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... spoil With a horrible mixture of garlic and oil, The chances are ten against one, I must own, He gets up as ill-temper'd as when he sat down. And if any reader this fact to dispute is Disposed, I say... "Allium edat cicutis Nocentius!" Over the fruit and the wine Undisturb'd the wasp settled. The evening was fine. Lord Alfred his chair by the window had set, And languidly lighted his small cigarette. The window was open. The warm air without Waved the flame of the candles. The moths were about. In the ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... once, when I made her jealous for fun, At something I'd whispered, or looked, or done, One Sunday in San Antonio, To a glorious girl on the Alamo, She drew from her belt a dear little dagger, And—sting of a wasp!—it made me stagger! An inch to the left, or an inch to the right, And I shouldn't be maundering here to-night; But she sobbed, and, sobbing, so swiftly bound Her torn rebosa about the wound, That I quite ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... flapping with a fin-like motion under sun burning down through a sky-light like a glass lid. Light skating on the rims of wheels... boring in gimlet points. Needles flickering fierce white threads of light fine as a wasp's sting. Light in sweat-drops brighter than eyes and calico-pallid faces and bodies throwing off smells— and the air a bloated presence pressing on the walls and the ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... falsity, I have reproduced in this paper plates taken from leading American and English fashion monthlies during the past three decades, in each of which it is noticeable that extremes have been reached. In 1860-65, the hoop-skirt held sway, and the wasp waist was typical of beauty. Then no lady was correctly attired according to the prevailing idea who did not present a spectacle curiously suggestive of a moving circus tent. During this era four or ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... nest of the coal-black Trigona (Trigona carbonaria), from eastern Australia, Mr. F. Smith, of the British Museum, found from four hundred to five hundred dead workers, but no females. The combs were arranged precisely similar to those of the common wasp. The number of honey-pots which were placed at the foot of the nest was two hundred and fifty. Mr. Smith inclines to the opinion that the hive of Trigona contains several prolific females, as the great number of workers can only ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... of mine. She would hunger that I might eat, Would take the bitter and leave me the sweet; But once, when I made her jealous for fun At something I whispered or looked or done, One Sunday, in San Antonio, To a glorious girl in the Alamo, She drew from her garter a little dagger, And—sting of a wasp—it made me stagger! An inch to the left, or an inch to the right, And I shouldn't be maundering here tonight; But she sobbed, and sobbing, so quickly bound Her torn rebosa about the wound That I swiftly forgave her. ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... Carey looked on them very kindly, and said: "Little ones, I love your brave spirit. You shall not die. Neither shall you lose your beauty. I will give you a defence that will keep off all your enemies but one, that is the Long-stinger Wasp, for you must in some way pay for your loveliness." She waved her wand, and all over each of the Beauty-crawlers, there came out bunches of sharp stickers like porcupine quills, only they were worse than porcupine quills for each of the stickers was poisoned at the tip, so that ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... books of account, and began to piece figures together on backs of envelopes, using a shorthand of accounts such as a principal will use when he is impatient and not particular to a few pounds. A little wasp of curiosity was teasing Edwin, and to quicken it a comparison was necessary between the result of the first six months of that year and the first six months of the previous year. True, June had not quite expired, but most of the quarterly accounts were ready, and he could form a trustworthy estimate. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... with a letter for the post. By nature a bachelor, he was instinctively ashamed of his family, and when the weary-looking wife, the thin, shy girl, or the corpulent, stupid-faced son were with him and he heard steps outside, he would come out like a little wasp, and, unmistakably resenting the intrusion, would ask what ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... the tips of the wheat—burr-rr—as he passed; then a scarlet fly, and next a bright yellow wasp who was telling a friend flying behind him that he knew where there was such a capital piece of wood to bite up into tiny pieces and make into paper for the nest in the thatch, but his friend wanted to go to the house because there was a pear quite ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... frae the toon, and it's droll I never saw ye land. There was never mony got into Doom withoot the kennin' o' the garrison. It happened aince in Black Hugh's time wi' a corps o' Campbells frae Ardkinglas, and they found themselves in a wasp's byke." ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... such a variety of expression and so copious a language as common poultry. Take a chicken of four or five days old, and hold it up to a window where there are flies, and it will immediately seize its prey, with little twitterings of complacency; but if you tender it a wasp or a bee, at once its note becomes harsh, and expressive of disapprobation and a sense of danger. When a pullet is ready to lay she intimates the event by a joyous and easy soft note. Of all the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... place of capture was very significant, and it happened July 12 only a fortnight after Blakely captured the 'Reindeer' farther westward. The 'Siren' was but one of many privateers in those waters. The 'Governor Tompkins' burned fourteen vessels successively in the British Channel. The 'Young Wasp,' of Philadelphia, cruised nearly six months about the coasts of England and Spain, and in the course of West India commerce. The 'Harpy,' of Baltimore, another large vessel of some 350 tons and fourteen guns, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... was the comb I had contrived out of the stumps of the king's beard, and another of the same materials, but fixed into a paring of her majesty's thumb-nail, which served for the back. There was a collection of needles and pins, from a foot to half a yard long; four wasp stings, like joiners' tacks; some combings of the queen's hair; a gold ring which one day she made me a present of, in a most obliging manner, taking it from her little finger and throwing it over my head like a collar. I desired the ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... in doing ample credit to both. For a while, his opposite neighbour and he were too busy to take much notice of each other, except by a good-humoured nod as each in turn raised the tankard to his head. At length, when our pedestrian began to supply the wants of little Wasp, the Scotch storefarmer, for such was Mr. Dinmont, found himself at ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... its perseverance, and its virtue. Patience, industry, and perseverance it has, beyond a doubt, and in a wonderful degree; but ingenuity, and virtue, it has none, more than the spider, who spins his worthless web, or the wasp, who stings you when disturbing his labors. Instinct, the bee has, like all animals; but of kind feeling, and gratitude, it has nothing; and with all our vivid nursery remembrance of good Doctor Watts' charming ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... rather night, to you, Thane of Aescendune," said he to Elfwyn; "we have had a fair night's work, and destroyed a big wasp's nest; have you come for your share ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... she scampered up the corridor; however, I must try and find something to do here—it's very dull being all by oneself. Just then, as she drew near one of the windows, she heard a great buzzing and fluttering, and looking up, saw a large wasp dancing about in the sunshine. Wishie thought it would be very good fun to try and catch him, so she made several springs at the window, but all in vain; the wasp was as young and active as she was, and eluded ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... spoke with earnest unction. "Thou knowest that I do not much busy myself in lay schemes; when I do, the object must be great. Now, Montagu, I have of late narrowly and keenly watched that spidery web which ye call a court, and I see that the spider will devour the wasp, unless the wasp boldly break the web,—for woman-craft I call the spider, and soldier-pride I style the wasp. To speak plainly, these Woodvilles must be bravely breasted and determinately abashed. I do not mean that we can deal with the king's wife and her family as with any other foes; but we must ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... engaged my particular attention because it was not alone, being accompanied by a green caterpillar bigger than herself, which she held beneath her body as she travelled along on the window-sill so near my face. "So, so! my little wren-wasp, you have found a satisfactory cranny at last, and have made yourself at home. I have seen you prying about here for a week and wondered where you would take ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... we said to anybody before Felix was gone, or else somebody 'ud ha' been safe to ha' tould him, for there's plinty of people couldn't be goin' about widout tellin' everythin' they hear any more than a wasp could fly widout buzzin' its wings. And then we got the docther to her, but he couldn't do e'er a hand's turn. Sure what could anybody do agin the lightnin', that's a sort of miracle, you may say, unless it was ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... himself as sure of getting the better of his neighbour as thou dost, a wasp that buzzes against the cicala. But as it is plain thou thinkst the kid no fair stake, lo, here is this he-goat. Begin ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... Hodgett, sedate and dignified as he was, had better have danced a hornpipe in his thinnest silks amongst a bed of stinging nettles, or have poked sticks into a wasp's nest, or amused himself with any other innocent recreation, than have made an enemy of John Brown. It was what he himself would have called a wrong move, and it played the deuce with his game. John was the very man who could annoy him, and he did. None ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... pointed, seemed peering at his great teeth, yellowed by much smoking of cigarettes. He added to his charms an attire intentionally bizarre, for he dressed himself, so to speak, in character. And with these natural and achieved drawbacks to his appearance he had the temper of a wasp, so that it was small wonder that questionings were rife as to the reason of his retention, his overpaid retention, in the De Nemours' household. He had a wit of his own, had Quantrelle. Frequently his pleasing fancy led him to ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Secretary of State's despatches by any vessel going from our distant ports, I retained the polygraph therein mentioned for a safer conveyance. None such has occurred till now, that the United States' armed brig the Wasp, on her way to the Mediterranean is to touch at Falmouth, with despatches for our ministers at London, and at Brest, with others for yourself ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Bohemians without labour fed! The ant the worst of all the crew— Fly, drone, wasp, beetle too with horned head, All of them sharpers thro' and thro', Idlers the sun drew to thy well apace— None more than she was ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... another shape," quoth the Queen, "for I fear lest the bees should take thee for a stinging wasp, Porro." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... especial chronicler of this time. Such a man must have been an intolerable nuisance in his day, but his piquant impertinence is amusing in ours. He was evidently a wasp, pretending to perform the part of a butterfly, and fluttering over all the court flowers, only to plant his sting. As he was a perpetual flirt, he dangled round the Pomfret family; and probably received some severe rebuke from their mother, for he describes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... that this contented me, and I felt free to devote myself to the conquest of my new world. Looking back to those critical first years, I see myself always behaving like a child let loose in a garden to play and dig and chase the butterflies. Occasionally, indeed, I was stung by the wasp of family trouble; but I knew a healing ointment—my faith in America. My father had come to America to make a living. America, which was free and fair and kind, must presently yield him what he sought. I had come to America to see a new world, and I followed my own ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... am I made your laughing-stock? For you, sir, I shall find a time; but take off your wasp here, or the clown may grow boisterous; I have ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... with his motion, Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled, But the wary roebuck started, Stamped with all his hoofs together, Listened with one foot uplifted, Leaped as if to meet the arrow, Ah! the singing, fatal arrow; Like a wasp it ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... tablecloth in a vengeful mess of gravy. Chickens' bones were there dealt with on all sides as nature perhaps intended that they should be dealt with, namely, by taking them between finger and thumb, and removing superfluities with the teeth; and French officers with wasp-like waists, and red trousers gathered in plaits to match, boldly despised the sophistication of spoons, and ate their vanilla cream like men, by the help of bread and fingers. The manners and broken French of the stranger formed an open and agreeable subject of conversation, and the table ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... flowers are, and working upward; the wasps commencing at the top, among the newly opened ones. In spite of the fact that we usually see hive bees about this plant, pilfering the generous supply of nectar in each tiny cup, it is undoubtedly the wasp that is the flower's truest benefactor, since he carries pollen from the older blossoms of the last raceme visited to the projecting stigmas of the newly opened flowers at the top of the next cluster. Manifestly no flower, even though it were especially adapted to wasps, as this ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Hazel looked bright, but the list was like a wasp, its sting lay in its tail. However, he put a good face on it. "I'll try and get you all those things; only give me time. Do you know I am writing a dictionary on a ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... the Louvre, because we scamped it. The fact is, there was a little unpleasantness with one of the fellows, owing to Jim's cane happening to scratch one of the pictures by a chap named Rubens. It was quite an accident, as we were only trying to spike a wasp on the frame, and Jim missed his shot. The fellow there made a mule of himself, and lost his temper. So we didn't see the fun ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... have not seen in any other insects of this family. The fore wings have a protective colouring; the hind wings are bright red. When at rest, with the red and purple tints concealed, it is only a very pretty grasshopper, but the instant it takes wing it becomes the fac-simile of a very common wasp of the genus Pepris. These wasps vary greatly in size, some being as large as the hornet; they are solitary, and feed on the honey of flowers and on fruit, and, besides being furnished with stings like other wasps—though ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... exclaimed. "Talk to me of a wasp's nest! Bosekop! You shall hear of me there enough to satisfy your appetite for news. Bosekop! In the days when my race ruled the land, such people as they that dwell there would have been put to sharpen my sword on the grindstone, or to wait, hungry and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... (October 13).—The next noted achievement was the defeat of the English brig Frolic by the sloop-of-war Wasp, off the coast of North Carolina. When the former was boarded by her captors, her colors were still flying, there being no one to haul them down. The man at the helm was the only sailor ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... when they are quite young they will follow with equal readiness any moving object remotely resembling their mother, or even a human being (James, "Psychology," ii, 396). Bergson, quoting Fabre, has made play with the supposed extraordinary accuracy of the solitary wasp Ammophila, which lays its eggs in a caterpillar. On this subject I will quote from Drever's ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell |
