"Webbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on a high note. Next behind, on the right, was a long-nosed gar-fish singing alto, and proud of her slender form, with the last new thing in folding fans held in her fin. In the fore-ground squatted a great fat frog with big bulging eyes, singing base, and leading the choir by flapping his webbed fingers up and down with his frightful cavern of a mouth wide open. Next, sat the stately and dignified mackerel who was rather scandalized at the whole affair, and kept very still, refusing to join in. At the mackerel's right ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... long and rather narrow room, with a high ceiling, duskily lighted by three wide windows that were thickly webbed and dusted, like ancestral bottles of fine crusty Port. A veritable den it was, filled with what seemed to be the wrecks of philosophical apparatus dating back two or three generations—ill-fated ventures on the treacherous ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... arched wooden bridge which formed the only entrance to the Mosslands for any but webbed feet, the sun had mastered the clouds, and was shining through the boughs of the tall elms that made a deep nest for the gardener's cottage—turning the raindrops into diamonds, and inviting the nasturtium flowers creeping over the porch and low-thatched roof to lift up their flame-coloured ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... and sat upon its sloping shoulders without a connecting neck. Its legs were short, but its arms were long, and when standing erect it carried them well in front of an enormous torso. Its short hands and feet were webbed like those of a duck. It had no visible ears, and its nostrils were mere holes above a wide, grinning, thin-lipped mouth, which was always spread in a grin. Its large, round, red eyes had no gleam of intelligence, and its hairless skin, ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... which are beyond all question the centre of attraction in the fish-house. The birds comprise a darter, a cormorant, a guillemot, and a penguin. The first-named is seldom seen in this country. It is a largish bird with webbed feet, long thin neck, and spear-like bill. When swimming in the water with its body entirely submerged, it looks not unlike a snake forging along. Hence it is also known as the snake-neck. The cormorant and darter, though here classed for convenience' sake among the divers, really belong ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... recognized him; his face did not appear often in public places, except in his own state, and, even so, it was a thoroughly ordinary face. But, as he walked, Senator John Peter Gonzales was keeping a mental, fine-webbed, four-dimensional net around him, feeling for the slightest touch of recognition. He wanted no one to connect him in any way ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... length of a full-grown one is about a yard, but there are some even four feet long; a large one weighed twenty pounds: on the island of Albemarle they seem to grow to a greater size than elsewhere. Their tails are flattened sideways, and all four feet partially webbed. They are occasionally seen some hundred yards from the shore, swimming about; and Captain Collnett, in his Voyage says, "They go to sea in herds a-fishing, and sun themselves on the rocks; and may be called alligators in miniature." It must not, however, be supposed that they live on fish. When ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... museum for the town. I was glad of the opportunity to ascend one of the high pagoda-like towers so familiar in Japanese paintings. I was disillusioned. Instead of finding myself in beautiful rooms for the enjoyment of marvellous views and sea breezes I had to clamber over the roughest cob-webbed timbers. One storey was connected with another by a stair of rude planking. Such pagodas were built only for their military value as lookouts and for their delightful ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... bees, nearly mature, will be removed alive, all webbed together, fastened by legs, wings, &c. All their efforts for breaking loose prove unavailing. Also others that are separate may be seen running about with their wings mutilated, or part of their legs ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... women who crossed it. It had rained for twenty-four hours, and still the rain poured on. The fowls had collected—a melancholy crowd—in and about the wagon-house, and the solitary gander, who alone had survived the six months' want of water, walked hither and thither, printing his webbed footmarks on the mud, to have them washed out the next instant by the pelting rain, which at eleven o'clock still beat on the walls ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... gulls, who belong to a class known as "long-winged swimmers." They have strong wings and fly great distances, and with their webbed feet swim well, too. Most of the sea-gulls are white with a gray coat on their backs, but they look snowy-white as they fly. You may see them walking about the wharves, or perching on roofs and piles watching for food, and seeming very tame as they pick up bits of bread ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... eye blinked, every wing half-opened, every beak shut tight as Cob, whom everybody had thought to be miles away by that time, threw forward his wings, umbrella-fashion, flung them up, hat-fashion, fanning wide his tail, dropped his giant webbed feet, and came to anchor with a rush. Then he folded those wonderful pinions of his, foot by rustling foot, stared stonily at the amazed, mute company around him, and, throwing back his immaculate, smooth, low-browed, spotless head, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... carefully decanted a cob-webbed bottle of claret into the goblet, which held nearly an English pint; and, at the conclusion, delivering the bottle to the butler, to be held carefully in the same angle with the horizon, he devoutly quaffed off the contents of the Blessed Bear ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... certain families. The same influence is more striking in the case of certain innocent tumours—particularly multiple osteomas and lipomas—which are hereditary in the same sense as supernumerary or webbed fingers, and appear in members of the same family through ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... the Rodent Family; for instance, the great Capivara, which is equal in size to an ordinary pig. This species is not a swift runner upon land; but it is semi-aquatic in its habits, and can swim and dive like an otter, its feet being webbed or palmated. It herds in troops of from five or ten to fifty in number, and is found upon the banks of all the great South American rivers, where it has for its chief ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... Dick, "when I wish all horses had been born with webbed feet. The hoof of a horse seems made purposely to cut through a muskeg, and the leg of a horse is just long enough to tangle him up in one. None the less, here is the muskeg, and here we are with our horses, and we must ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... and his powerful arms were little more than half as long as would have been expected had they belonged to a human being of his size. The hands and feet were very large and very broad, and the fingers and toes were heavily webbed. His high domed forehead appeared even higher because of the total lack of hair, otherwise his features were regular and well-proportioned. He carried himself easily and gracefully, and yet with the dignity of one accustomed ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... the foot and to all parts of the frog and at top of hoof joining the hair, and cover the entire wall of the foot. The horse should stand on a deep, soft bed. Cover with blankets. Feed bran mashes, vegetables and hay; no grain. Use wide-webbed shoes two weeks ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... would flit Swart bats, whose wings, be-webbed and tanned, Whirred like the wheels of ancient clocks: She laughed a hailing as she scanned Me in the gloom, the tuneful box ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... it is a hybernian, for when times are dull and nothing much going on it buries itself under the mud at the bottom of a puddle and hybernates there a couple of weeks at a time; it is a kind of duck, for it has a duck-bill and four webbed paddles; it is a fish and quadruped together, for in the water it swims with the paddles and on shore it paws itself across country with them; it is a kind of seal, for it has a seal's fur; it is carnivorous, herbivorous, insectivorous, and vermifuginous, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... [Footnote: Amphibious: able to live in water and on land.] 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, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... result will follow. She may not ride in a cart, for if she does the child will be always crying and will snore in its sleep; if she eats the flesh of field rats the child's body will be covered with hair and if she eats duck or goose flesh the child will be born with its fingers and toes webbed. Nor may a pregnant woman look on a funeral, for if she does her child will always sleep ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... of September, two alcatrazes came near the ship about two hours before noon, and soon afterwards a third. On this day likewise they took a bird resembling a heron, of a black colour, with a white tuft on its head, and having webbed feet like a duck. Abundance of weeds were seen floating in the sea, and one small fish was taken. About evening three land birds settled on the rigging of the ship and began to sing. These flew away at day-break, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... Tables of Lift and Drift. Why Tables of Lift and Drift are Wrong. Langley's Law. Moving Planes vs. Winds. Momentum not Considered. The Flight of Birds. The Downward Beat. The Concaved Wing. Feather Structure Considered. Webbed Wings. The Angle of Movement. An Initial Movement or Impulse Necessary. A Wedging Motion. No Mystery in the Wave Motion. How Birds Poise with Flapping Wings. Narrow- winged Birds. Initial Movement of Soaring Birds. Soaring Birds Move Swiftly. Muscular ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... Birds that swim have webbed feet, which act as oars for pushing them through the water. Their feathers are compact and soft for warmth, and these properties, together with oil on their surfaces, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... figures of him, reflections, multiplications of him, ranged there by ranks of hundreds—the Thousand Jizo. From the ceiling above him droop the dingy splendours of a sort of dais-work, a streaming circle of pendants like a fringe, shimmering faintly through the webbed dust of centuries. And the ceiling itself must once have been a marvel; all beamed in caissons, each caisson containing, upon a gold ground, the painted figure of a flying bird. Formerly the eight great pillars supporting the roof were also ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... small fish, something like chub in shape, with round mouths and very white stomachs, which suddenly appeared upon the surface, jumping at invisible flies. These attracted a number of birds that resembled gulls of a light build. They had coal-black heads, white backs, greyish wings, and slightly webbed feet, pink as coral, with which they seized the small fish, uttering as they did so, a peculiar and plaintive cry that ended in a long-drawn e-e-e. The father of the flock, whose head seemed to be white like his back, perhaps from age, hung above them, ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... white oak. Back to the river where the stream from the spring makes open water you find some queer tracks on the fresh snow; there is a round spot as big as a quarter in each one, faint radiating lines in front ending with the marks of sharp toes; these were made by the soft-padded foot and webbed toes of the mink. ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... water-spirit appears in the shape of a great bird, which the West Highlanders called the Boobrie, who has a long neck, great webbed feet with tremendous claws, a powerful bill hooked like an eagle's, and a voice like the roar of an angry bull. The lochs, according to popular fancy, are also inhabited by water-spirits. In Sutherlandshire this kind ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... beaks would inherit the same peculiarity, and in the course of several generations there would thus arise a species with short and strong, perhaps curved, beaks just fitted to live on fruits of the kind described. In a similar way the webbed feet of birds that swim were developed by their aquatic habits. And so with the long slender toes of the waders, which are so well fitted for walking over ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... British of the two Isles professing a suckling attachment to an ancient port-wine, lawyer, doctor, squire, rosy admiral, city merchant, the classic scholar is he whose blood is most nuptial to the webbed bottle. The reason must be, that he is full of the old poets. He has their spirit to sing with, and the best that Time has done on earth to feed it. He may also perceive a resemblance in the wine ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... when it sits appear upon its back. When we left Louisiana, near an hundred halcyons followed our vessel for near three days: they kept at the distance of about a stone-cast, and seemed to swim, yet I could never discover that their feet were webbed, and was therefore greatly surprised. They probably live upon the small insects that drop from the outside of the vessel when sailing; for they now-and-then dived, and came up in the same place. I have some suspicion that, by keeping in the wake of ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... in the antechamber, he was brought to the door of the dining-room by Francois. At a sign from the countess, Francois allowed him to pass in, followed by Mouche with his mouth full and carrying the otter, hanging by a string tied to its yellow paws, webbed like those of a palmiped. He cast upon his four superiors sitting at table, and also upon Sibilet, that look of mingled distrust and servility which serves as a veil to the thoughts of the peasantry; then he brandished his amphibian with ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... for his swim. He wore a cloak of coarse material with breeches and had his fingers webbed. The weather was fine; he left the island towards the evening. Illugi thought his journey was hopeless. Grettir had the current with him and it was calm as he swam towards the fjord. He smote the water bravely and ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... his naked hands Stern tore and battered it away. A thick, pungent haze of dust arose, yellow in the morning sunlight that presently, for the first time in a thousand years, fell warm and bright across the cob-webbed front hallway, through ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... slithering another creature with a gigantic, quivering, jelly body. Kirby saw to his horror that, in addition to four short legs with webbed, claw-tipped feet, there sprouted from the body a number of octopus tentacles. From the scabrous mottle of the head, cruel, unintelligent, bestial eyes glared ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... into the South, or else went into warm, snug hollows in the trees or caves in the rocks and slept the long winter through, just as Johnny Chuck does. He told how the Indians came through the great forest on big webbed shoes, that kept them from sinking into the snow, and hunted for Lightfoot the Deer, and how they never bothered Prickly Porky, but always treated him with the greatest respect. He told so many, many interesting things about ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... nostrils that autumn had arrived. A crispness in the feel of the air, elusive but persistent, hinted of approaching frost. The still warmth was haunted, every now and then, by a passing ghost of chill. Here and there the pale green of the birches was thinly webbed with gold. Here and there a maple hung out amid its rich verdure a branch prematurely turned, glowing like a banner of aerial rose. Along the edges of the little wild meadows which bordered the loitering brooks the first thin blooms of the asters began to show, like ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... board, therefore he needn't be afraid. A gleam of mischief twinkled in Striped Chipmunk's eyes. He seized the other end of the string and began to pull. Such a jerking and yanking as began right away! But he held on and pulled harder. Then out from under the old board appeared the queer webbed feet of Grandfather Frog tied together. Striped Chipmunk was so surprised that he let go of the string and nearly ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... is very considerable in Brazil, where they take the place of the shrews of Europe; shrew mice and, indeed, the whole of the insectivorous order of mammals, being entirely absent from Tropical America. One kind of these rat-like opossums is aquatic, and has webbed feet. The terrestrial species are nocturnal in their habits, sleeping during the day in hollow trees, and coming forth at night to prey on birds in their roosting places. It is very difficult to rear poultry in this country on account ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... her form shrunk together in the shape of a frog. Her body was much larger than those animals ever are, and on this account it was much more hideous in appearance; for she looked like a wretched dwarf, with a frog's head, and webbed fingers. Her eyes had a most piteous expression; she was without a voice, excepting a hollow, croaking sound, like the smothered sobs ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... hospital. Conscious of his priestly dignity and of the need of supporting it, but shaken by the minor stresses of the situation, the senseless multiplicity of forks and spoons, the bewildering restrictions by which he felt himself to be webbed about, hampered, mastered, Father Tim was as a wild bull in a net, and was even pathetic in his unavailing efforts to prove himself equal to his surroundings. He cleared his throat at intervals, with an authority that seemed to prelude something more epoch-making than an assent to one of Frederica's ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... are ripening; darkness and filth dwell together in the tenement cellars where the garment-worker sews the buttons on for the sweat-shop taskmaster; goats live amiably with human kids in the cob-webbed basements where little hands are twisting stems for flowers; in the unlovely stable lofts where dwell a dozen persons in a place never intended for one; in windowless attics of tall tenements where frail lives grow frailer ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... species of the order Chelonia, to which turtles and tortoises belong, are distinguished mainly by the limbs. The common fresh-water turtles have distinct toes, which are webbed and provided with long nails. They are easy and powerful swimmers, but are very helpless on land. They feed upon all kinds of aquatic worms and insects. The tortoises, or land turtles, have short clubbed feet adapted for travelling on the ground, and stout, short ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... spoke, a change, strange and terrible, passed over the forms of the trampling peasants. Their stature shrank. They grew squat and fat. Their hands and feet were webbed, and their grinning mouths became great, sad, gaping openings by which to swallow worms and flies. Green and yellow and brown were their skins, and when they would fain have cried aloud for mercy, from their throats there would come only ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... or wasps, several lizards, and the blackberry bushes were full of ants nests, webbed as a spider's, but so close and compact as not to ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh
... there were webs between Mr. Cricket Frog's toes. And everybody knows that webbed feet ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... during this period any more than so many Trenton trilobites. Bent up, wrinkled, yellow-eyed, with long upper-lip, projecting jaws, retreating chin, still meek features, long arms, large flat hands with uncolored palms and slightly webbed fingers, it was impossible not to see in this old creature a hint of the gradations by which life climbs up through the lower natures to the highest human developments. We cannot tell such old women's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... she cried, shaking the water off her tail as she scrambled through. Phil noticed that she was as agile in the water as she was clumsy on land, and that two toes on each foot were webbed. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... whimpering little sound made him look down. A native child or pollywog as the Terrans called them was clinging desperately to the teacher's skirt. His tiny webbed feet clutched at the cloth as he buried his face against her leg. From behind her peered still another child, its baby frog face working spasmodically in the beginnings of a sob. Six or seven others were lying flat on the floor ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... on the arm of a youth. Can it be possible the he would try to do what I did? Men differ so in their virtues, and are so alike in their transgressions. This forward gosling displayed white duck pantaloons, brandished pumps on his feet, which looked flat enough to have been webbed, and was scented as to his marital locks with a far-reaching pestilence ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... grosbeak or Bohemian chatterer. Imagine, then, how I was taken aback when I beheld instead a swallow-shaped bird, quite as large as a pigeon, with a forked tail, glossy black above and snow-white beneath. Its parti-webbed feet, and its long graceful wings, at a glance told that it was a sea-bird; but as to its name or habitat I must defer my answer till I could get a peep into Audubon or ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... a dense webbed bed of welded sinews; but cut into it, and you find that three distinct strata compose it:—upper, middle, and lower. The fibres in the upper and lower layers, are long and horizontal; those of the middle one, very short, and running crosswise between the outside layers. This triune ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... creek—for the best of reasons. He was anything but a fast walker. In fact, one might say that he waddled, or even crawled, rather than walked. But in the water he was quite a different creature. By means of his webbed feet he could swim as easily as Mr. Crow could fly. And he could stay at the bottom of Black Creek a surprisingly long time before he came up for a breath of air. Indeed, Mr. Crow sometimes remarked that he would be just as well pleased if Timothy Turtle buried himself in the mud beneath the ...
— The Tale of Timothy Turtle • Arthur Scott Bailey
... cramped delusion that things are good merely because they are dusty and immobile. I won't share the fallacy that to call a thing conservative sanctifies it. There is more virtue in a tiled bathroom than in a cob-webbed chapel. If we change this house at all we ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... ready for swimming, and had on a cowl of market-wadmal, and his breeches girt about him, and he got his fingers webbed together, and the weather was fair. So he went from the island late in the day, and desperate Illugi deemed his journey. Grettir made out into the bay, and the stream was with him, and a calm was over all. He swam on fast, and ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... translucent material shut out the sky. Gigantic globes of cool white light shamed the pale sunbeams that filtered down through the girders and wires. Here and there a gossamer suspension bridge dotted with foot passengers flung across the chasm and the air was webbed with slender cables. A cliff of edifice hung above him, he perceived as he glanced upward, and the opposite facade was grey and dim and broken by great archings, circular perforations, balconies, buttresses, turret projections, myriads ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... the traveller had a view of the best of the old Virginia life, its wealth of beauty, its home comfort, its atmosphere of serenity, of old memories, rich and vivid, like the wine that lay cob-webbed in ancestral cellars, of gracious hospitality, of a softly tinted life like the color in old pictures and the soul in old books. The gentle humorist lived to see that life pass away from the Old Dominion and all too soon he vanished into another ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... massed and webbed with ship rigging; the water was livened with boats and canoes; the wooden warehouses back of the docks were overtopped by wooden houses in tiers, until high above them all the Capitol itself was the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... particularly Aristotle, pretended that the ospreys taught their young to gaze at the sun, and those who were unable to do so were destroyed. Linnaeus even believed, on ancient authority, that one of the feet of this bird had all the toes divided, while the other was partly webbed, so that it could swim with one foot, and grasp a fish with the other." But that educated eye is now dim, and those talons are nerveless. Its shrill scream seems yet to linger in its throat, and the roar of the sea in its wings. There is the tyranny of Jove in its claws, and his wrath in the erectile ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... as fresh as ever, dived as willingly and swam yet further than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a waterfowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... timbers. Still The setting sun washed with a fuller gold The golden sheaves patterned upon a cone Of downland by him farther from the sea. So still, he seemed a thing woven of earth, A life rooted and fixed as were the oaks Locked in the soil, their bases webbed with fleece Of sheltering ewes, he watched across the valley, And the hour passed, and the black mill grew and grew, And then a light came in a far window Of a grey farm cresting the hill beyond, And sudden tides beat on him as he saw A white dress ...
— Preludes 1921-1922 • John Drinkwater
... well view.—The camel, or dromedary with two bunches called the Huguin[1188], taller than any horse.—Two camels with one bunch.—Among the birds was a pelican, who being let out, went to a fountain, and swam about to catch fish. His feet well webbed: he dipped his head, and turned his long bill sidewise. He caught two or three fish, but did not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... was the cause of the strange noise. Ball, 3 and 5' shot were equally efficacious and more than a dozen fell in a few minutes. These birds have a beautiful black and white plumage with a long neck and bill and webbed feet and weigh five or six pounds each. The flavour is somewhat like ptarmigan and the natives eat them, as usual, without waiting until they were ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... long white plumes which give the bird its altogether unique character, spring from little tubercles close to the upper edge of the shoulder or bend of the wing; they are narrow, gentle curved, and equally webbed on both sides, of a pure creamy white colour. They are about six inches long, equalling the wing, and can be raised at right angles to it, or laid along the body at the pleasure of the bird. The bill is horn colour, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... or "Water-horse," a horse with staring eyes, webbed feet, and a slimy coat, is still dreaded. He assumes different forms and lures the unwary to destruction, or he makes love in human shape to women, some of whom discover his true nature by seeing a piece of water-weed in his hair, and only escape with difficulty. Such a ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... a penguin, I think; it let me get quite close, so that I knocked it on the head with a stick. Here are its head and feet, which I preserved to show you; the bill is, you see, narrow and curved downward, and the feet are webbed. It had funny little bits of useless wings, and its eyes looked so solemnly and sedately at me that I was ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... duck; its edges are hard, and at the back part of the mouth are four teeth. But it cannot grasp anything very firmly with the bill, which shows that its food must be of a soft nature. The feet of the platypus are five-toed and webbed, being, like the rest of the body, suited for an aquatic life. Another singular fact is that the animal has a spur on each hind leg. This spur is connected with a gland, which resembles those of serpents, and may contain poison. Certainly it appears as if this ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... understand how the properly so-called divers can plunge with impetus to great depths, or keep themselves at the bottom by continued strokes of the webbed feet; but neither how the ouzel walks at the bottom, if it be specifically lighter than the water, nor how a bird can swim horizontally under the surface; at least it is not enough explained that the action must be always that of oblique diving, the bird regulating the stroke according to the ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... gently, by means of the webbed feet alone, the young sportsman moved about like a sly water-spirit among the reeds, sometimes addressing a few pleasant words, such as, "how d'ye do, old boy," or, "don't alarm yourself, my tulip," to a water-hen or a coot, or some such bird which crossed his path, but was unworthy ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... sit still and sorrowful, shrivelled up into the form of a frog, though the head was now much larger than that little animal's, and therefore she was uglier than ever: she looked like a miserable dwarf, with a frog's head and webbed fingers. There was something very sad in her eyes; voice she had none except a kind of croak like a child sobbing in its dreams. Then would the Viking's wife take her in her lap; she would forget the ugly form, and look only at the ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... a frog the toes are very long and webbed from point to point. In this it differs a good deal from the toad, and there is significance in the difference. The "heavy-gaited toad," satisfied with sour ants, hard beetles, and such other fare as it can easily pick up, and grown ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... to carry out the order. He put the beautiful olive-drab hat on the table. Next he unfastened the neat, webbed belt, and unlaced the soldierly leggings. The emblemed coat came off carefully. The khaki shirt followed. Last of all, having slipped his feet out of the wonderful shoes, he pulled off the trousers, and stood, a pathetic little figure, in an old undershirt of Grandpa's, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... facts are, as it seems to me, explicable on this theory. How strange it is that a bird, under the form of a woodpecker, should prey on insects on the ground; that upland geese which rarely or never swim, would possess webbed feet; that a thrush-like bird should dive and feed on sub-aquatic insects; and that a petrel should have the habits and structure fitting it for the life of an auk! and so in endless other cases. But on the view of each species constantly trying to increase ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... pipes," but the flesh is not good to eat. The albatross has been seen fully 1000 miles from any shore. Its power of wing must therefore be very great, but when tired it can walk on the water with its strong webbed feet, and the sound of its tread is said to be heard at a great distance. In the breeding season the albatross retires in company with other sea-birds, particularly the penguin, to some rocky shore to build its nest. The penguins' and albatrosses' nests are always found ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... places where sand-burrs were plentiful. These burrs in the tender inner part of a dog's foot, if not removed at once, soon lame it. Many times had the poor creatures lain down, licking their paws in anguish. On examination during the previous night, their feet were found to be webbed with this burr. Now, on climbing this second mountain, they began to show the lameness which their master so much feared, until it was almost impossible to make them take any interest in the trail. The old dog, however, seemed nothing ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... varieties of Houseleek, this is at once the most curious, interesting, and beautiful. It is by far the finest of the webbed forms. It has, however, the reputation of not being quite hardy, but that it will endure our severest winters is without doubt, and if we recall its habitats, which are in alpine regions, its hardiness in a low ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... distinguish between the effects of the selection of indefinite variations, and the direct action of the conditions of life. For instance, it is possible that the feet of our water-dogs, and of the American dogs which have to travel much over the snow, may have become partially webbed from the stimulus of widely extending their toes; but it is far more probable that the webbing, like the membrane between the toes of certain pigeons, spontaneously appeared and was afterwards increased by the best swimmers and the best snow-travellers being preserved during many generations. A ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... and along the banks of our big rivers you may see the Common Gull with numbers of his black-headed cousins. His beak and legs and webbed feet are greenish yellow, and this is quite enough to distinguish the two birds. Their habits are much the same. Both skim over the sea, or the coast, looking for waste food. They are not very "choice" in their meals; dead fish or live fish, young crabs, worms, shell-fish or grubs they ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... the muskeg. It was spitting snow, but he had no difficulty in seeing where the trail led from hummock to hummock in the miry earth. The going here was difficult, for the thick moss was full of short, stiff brush that caught the webbed shoes and tripped the traveler. It was hard to find level footing. The mounds were uneven, and more than once Onistah plunged knee-deep ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... immemorial kings, Who webbed enchantment on the bowls of night. Sleeps in the soul of all created things; In the blue sea, th' Acroceraunian height, In the eyed butterfly's auricular wings And orgied visions of the anchorite; In all that singing flies ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... above and silvery underneath, would have made one of those beautiful furs so sought after in the Russian and Chinese markets. I admired the curious animal, with its rounded head ornamented with short ears, its round eyes, and white whiskers like those of a cat, and its webbed feet and nails and tufted tail. This precious beast, hunted and tracked by fishermen, has now become very rare and has sought refuge in the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... of buildings whose every detail challenges the eye. Twelve pillars of snow-white wood sheathed in part with bronze, arranged in four rows, make, as it were, the bones of the structure. The space between the centre columns lies open. The other triplets are webbed in the middle and connected, on the sides and front, by grilles of wood and bronze forming on the outside a couple of embrasures on either hand the entrance in which stand the guardian Nio, two colossal demons, Gog and Magog. Instead ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... possible. The prow rises out of the water, shaped like the bird's neck and head; the keel is rounded like the belly; the stern is an imitation of the tail; the legs are supplied by two large adjuncts in the shape of webbed feet, with the addition, however, of numerous wheels fastened round the swan's belly, which are partially immersed in the water and moved by ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... stop in the water, and so long as he is in the water he can live. But by degrees he is encircled; some wade in and cut off his course; hounds stop him one way and men the other, till, finally forced to land or to the shallow, he is slain. His webbed feet are cut off and given as trophies to the ladies who are present. The skin varies in colour—sometimes a ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... wondering who were the men who had rediscovered the Two Cabins, and if he would fetch it next day. At the first hint of dawn he was under way, easily following the half-obliterated trail and packing the recent snow with his webbed shoes so that ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... top glasses of that window was out, and with the shutter open they come a breeze through that fluttered some strips of dirty-coloured papers, fly-specked and dusty and spider-webbed, that hung on strings acrost the room, jest below the ceiling. I guess they had been left ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... the more inaccessible parts of America, and the more northern countries of Europe, affords a curious instance of what may be called a compound structure. It has the fore-feet of a land animal, and the hind ones of an aquatic one—the latter only being webbed. Its tail is covered with scales like a fish, and serves to direct its course in the water, in which it spends ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... dentated at the base, the lower ones slanted and elongated; five small teeth follow the larger incisors on the upper jaw, and two those on the lower. There are three molars with sharp-pointed cusps in each jaw, with a small tuberculous tooth in the upper. The feet are five-toed, separate, not webbed like the moles; the snout is long and pointed ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... breakfast, he fell to, ate sparingly, lit his pipe, and gazed around the wretched room, of which the walls were blue-washed with a most offensive shade of blue, the bare floor was frankly dry mud and dust, the roof was bare cob-webbed thatch and rafter, and the furniture a rickety table, a dangerous-looking cane-bottomed settee and a leg-rest arm-chair from which some one had removed the leg-rests. Had some scoundrelly oont-wallah pinched them for fuel? (No, Damocles, an ex-Colonel ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... children of the race; and with the swarthy Kamtschatkans, with their broad faces, protuberant bellies, and thin, ill-formed legs. Passing southwards, we come to the negro tribes, with their sooty skins, broad noses, thick lips, projecting jawbones, and partially-webbed fingers. And then we find ourselves among the squalid Hottentots, repulsively ugly, and begrimmed with filth; or the still more miserable Bushmen. Passing eastwards, after taking leave of the Persian and Indian branches of the Caucasian race, we ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... The Indians use its incisor teeth, which are very large and hard, to cut the bone or horn with which they tip their spears. It is a rodent, or gnawing animal. It has a broad, horizontal, flattened tail, nearly of an oval form, which is covered with scales. The hind feet are webbed, and, with the aid of the tail, which acts as a rudder, enable it to swim through the water with ease and rapidity. Except in one respect, I do not know that it can be considered a sagacious animal; but it is a ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston |
