"Amphibious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... And conquering William brought the Normans o'er. All these their barbarous offspring left behind, The dregs of armies, they of all mankind; Blended with Britons, who before, were here. Of whom the Welsh ha' blessed the character. From this amphibious ill-born mob began That vain, ill-natured thing, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... more than half an hour I had been indolently watching this amphibious scene, when the landlord entering my room said, that the Russian Prince, G——n, wished to speak to me on some business; and the information was scarcely communicated, when I perceived his Highness standing at the threshold of my door. With the attention due to his rank, I instantly begged he would ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... steady downpour increased or diminished. Late in November we were moved to a city of wooden huts at Sandling Junction, to make room for newly recruited units. The dwellings were but half-finished, the drains were open ditches, and the rains descended and the floods came as usual. We lived an amphibious and wretched existence until January, when, to our great joy, we were transferred to billets in the Metropole, one of Folkestone's most fashionable hotels. To be sure, we slept on bare floors, but the roof was rainproof, which was the ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... than doubtful whether Lamarck knew of them. He observed that fossils appear first in "transition" or palaeozoic strata, and were mainly corals and molluscs; that in the older carboniferous rocks the fossils are of higher types, such as fish and amphibious animals; while in the tertiary or alluvial strata occur the remains of birds and quadrupeds. He thought that marine plants were more ancient than land plants. His studies led him to infer that the fossils contained in the oldest rocks are very different from any ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... sow and reap; he gave them all that contributes to the comforts of life. Since that time nothing excellent has been invented. At sunset this monster Oannes plunged back into the sea, and remained all night beneath the waves, for he was amphibious. He wrote a book on the origin of things and of civilization, which he gave to men." These are a few of the fables which were current among the races of the Lower Euphrates with regard to the first beginnings of the universe. That they possessed many other legends of which ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Ulupi he came back from the palace of Kauravya to the region where the Ganges entereth the plains. The chaste Ulupi, taking her leave there, returned to her own abode. And, O Bharata, she granted unto Arjuna a boon making him invincible in water, saying, 'Every amphibious creature shall, without doubt, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... die so quickly as you think," said Becker; "it commences by living three years under water in the form of a maggot. It afterwards becomes amphibious, when it has a horny covering, on which the rudiments of wings may be observed. Then, four or five months after this first metamorphosis, generally in the month of August, it issues from its skin, almost as rapidly ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... valued British intervention of this character even in the most unfavourable conditions. It was because they looked for its effects rather in the threat than in the performance. They did not reckon for positive results at all. So long as such intervention took an amphibious form they knew its disturbing effect upon a European situation was always out of all proportion to the intrinsic strength employed or the positive results it could give. Its operative action was that it threatened positive results unless it were strongly met. Its effect, in short, was negative. ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... discomposure. "Yes; but I have tried to remain amphibious: it's all right as long as one's lungs can work in another air. The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... short, he instructed them in everything that softens manners and makes up civilization, so that from that time no one has invented anything new. Then, when the sun went down, this monstrous Oannes used to plunge back into the sea and spend the night in the midst of the boundless waves, for he was amphibious." ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... not your kind. In the end you would have been the same as they. That was the pity of it. Perhaps it was pity that first taught me how much you were to me—how much you were worth saving from them—from yourself. I seemed impossible. I was nothing to you then—less than I am now—a queer sort of an amphibious beast that had left its more familiar element and taken to walks abroad among the elect of the earth. But I loved you then, Hermia, I love you now, and I've told you so. I hadn't meant to, but I'm not sorry. I'm glad that you know it—even though your smiles deride ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... trifling consideration they will successfully undertake feats which prove that they are almost as much at home in deep water as upon land, and when put to the test their strength and hardihood are extraordinary. Boys employed on beche-de-mer boats become almost amphibious. Some, as they swim and dive, collect the fish into a heap on the bottom of the sea until they have a parcel worthy of being taken to the attendant dinghy, alongside which they will come with arms so full as ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... themselves across a mile and a half of rough water, shook out their creases and touched up their hair on arrival, danced all the evening, and then paddled themselves home, whatever the weather. Most Bermudian girls, indeed, seem quite amphibious. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... aware that the inhabitants of the islands of Lake Tchad, like many other negro tribes, plunge with impunity into sheets of water infested with crocodiles and caymans, and without troubling their heads about them. The amphibious denizens of this lake enjoy the well-deserved reputation of being ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... of bathers,—ladies and little children, with towels and blue suits, and all the paraphernalia of pails and wooden shovels. Then will come perhaps a couple of girls, to sketch. They will encamp anywhere upon the shore, call into their service some small amphibious creature to tip a skiff up on its side to make an effective scene, and proceed with the wonders of their art. Soon the bathers return. They have been only a little way down the narrows, and come back to dinner at one. The fishermen come in from three to four, unless they ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... one gets accustomed to the ever-present canal and the odd spectacle (to us) of masts in the streets and sails in the fields. All the Dutch towns are amphibious, but some ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... our money-getting speculations, those freaks of the funds that leave many a man with one unfunded coat. The Thames tunnel is too amphibious an affair to be included in the number; but the ship canal project, the bridge-building mania, and the penchant for working mines by steam, evidently belong to them. The fashion even extends to royalty, since our good King builds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... to say, that if the sailors were properly educated, such an amphibious corps would never have been formed, and some of the most atrocious sinecures ever tolerated would consequently not ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... climbed a tree in which he saw a convenient resting-place. Between him and the three snakes there was a small pool of water, half concealed by the bushes, and the reptiles had probably come there to drink or to obtain for food some of the amphibious creatures that lived there. ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... abroad, In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies, Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. 320 His wit all see-saw, between that and this, } Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, } And he himself one vile Antithesis. } Amphibious thing! that acting either part, The trifling head or the corrupted heart, 325 Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board, Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord. Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... themselves in all degrees of ugliness and deformity. Of course Madame de Villegry did not bathe, being, as she said, too nervous. She was sitting under a large parasol and enjoying her own superiority over those wretched, amphibious creatures who waddled on the sands before her, comparing Madame X to a seal and Mademoiselle Z to the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... effect of interruption which the continuance of sound had not been able to compass. He drew himself up with a perplexed sigh, and looked drearily over the expanse of the river. Its long glittering reaches were vacant, a rare circumstance, for the Cherokees of that date were almost amphibious in habit, reveling in the many lovely streams of their mountain country; on the banks their towns were situated, and this fact doubtless contributed to the neatness of their habitations and personal cleanliness, to which the travelers of those times bear a surprised testimony. The ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... twentieth-century Bostonian," said the doctor, laughing at my delight. "It is said that a marked feature of our modern civilization is that we are tending to revert to the amphibious type of our remote ancestry; evidently you will not object to ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... the valiant Stoffel Brinkerhoof, who whilom had acquired such immortal fame at Oyster Bay; they displayed as a standard a beaver rampant on a field of orange, being the arms of the province, and denoting the persevering industry and the amphibious origin of the Nederlands. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... just set; the silence of the sky was full to the brim with ineffable peace and beauty. The vast expanse of water was without a ripple, mirroring all the changing shades of the sunset glow. Miles and miles of a desolate sandbank lay like a huge amphibious reptile of some antediluvian age, with its scales glistening in shining colours. As our boat was silently gliding by the precipitous river-bank, riddled with the nest-holes of a colony of birds, suddenly a big fish leapt up to the surface ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... with Saloo, who better understood its habits. He knew they were amphibious, and that, where the dugong was found, land could not be a long way off. He said this, once more arousing his companions by his words to ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... general, correspond completely in many points of structure with conditions which last for life in the lower fishes. The next phase which follows on this presents us with a change of the fish-like being into a kind of amphibious animal. At a later period the mammal, with its special characteristics, develops out of the amphibian, and we can clearly see, in the successive stages of its later development, a series of steps of progressive transformation which evidently correspond with the ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... Salabat, we went to another, where I furnished myself with cloves, cinnamon, and other spices. As we sailed from this island, we saw a tortoise twenty cubits in length and breadth. We observed also an amphibious animal like a cow, which gave milk; its skin is so hard, that they usually make bucklers of it. I saw another, which had the shape and colour of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... both are found on the coast of the Polar Sea, and both yielded ivory to the stocks of the Siberian merchants. In the same way all the statements which the French Jesuit, AVRIL, during his stay in Moscow in 1686, collected regarding the amphibious animal, Behemoth, occurring on the coast of the Tartarian Sea, (Polar Sea) refer not to the mammoth, as some writers, HOWORTH[215] for example, have supposed, but to the walrus. The name mammoth, which is probably of Tartar origin, Witsen appears to wish to derive from Behemoth, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... sails of Federal frigates, still more the sinister black hulls of the new steam men-of-war, meant that the South was fast becoming a land besieged, with every outwork accessible by water exposed to sudden attack and almost certain capture by any good amphibious force of soldiers ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... need for integrating departmental reports to national policymakers. Detailed coordinated information was needed not only on such major powers as Germany and Japan, but also on places of little previous interest. In the Pacific Theater, for example, the Navy and Marines had to launch amphibious operations against many islands about which information was unconfirmed or nonexistent. Intelligence authorities resolved that the United States should never again be ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 'em again," he replied, carefully examining a small dark-red newt which he held in the palm of one hand. "I say, Kathleen, look at this little creature. I was messing about under the ledges along Hurryon Brook, and found this amphibious gentleman occupying the ground-floor ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... neighborhood in 1638 an enormous reptile was seen "quoiled up on a rock at Cape Ann." He would have fired at him but for the earnest dissuasion of his Indian guide, who declared that ill luck would come of the attempt. The sea-serpent sometimes shows amphibious tendencies and occasionally leaves the sea for fresh water. Two of him were seen in Devil's Lake, Wisconsin, in 1892, by four men. They confess, however, that they were fishing at the time. The snakes had fins and were a ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... these slow-moving canal barges appeared to me to possess many charms. The barge people seem to pass a sort of amphibious existence, belonging neither to the land nor to the water, but having a human interest in each. The women and children almost wholly live aboard their floating homes, often never stepping ashore from one day ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes
... sauntering on the terraces of Sans Souci, for a short time in the afternoon, or you might have met him elsewhere at an earlier hour, riding or driving in a rapid business manner on the open roads or through the scraggy woods and avenues of that intricate amphibious Potsdam region, a highly interesting lean little old man, of alert though slightly stooping figure; whose name among strangers was King FRIEDRICH THE SECOND, or Frederick the Great of Prussia, and at home among the common people, who much ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... in a state of inundation, under the discipline of mops and brooms and scrubbing brushes; and the good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water,—insomuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us that many of his townswomen grew to have ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... adventurous meetings with poachers and painters are amusing in themselves, as well as instructive in their tendency to illustrate, not only the deeper mysteries of piscatorial art, but the life and conversation of the amphibious people who dwell by the sides of rivers. His first arrival in "fair Melrose," the moonlight lustre of which was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... can swim and dive also admirably, and will often remain underneath the surface for many minutes together, and then rising for a fresh supply of air, plunge down again. It indeed appears to be almost as amphibious as the hippopotamus, and has consequently been ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... from the vessel there was a seal-hole, a kind of circular crevice cut out by the teeth of that amphibious animal, hollowed out from underneath, and through which the seal comes up to breathe on to the surface of the ice. To keep this aperture from closing up he has to be very careful because the formation of his jaws would not enable ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... by a round horizon moon on his left. So for a couple of hours he went ahead over rolling fallow land to the meadow-flats and a pale shining of freshets; then hit on a lane skirting the water, and reached an amphibious village; five miles from Storling, he was informed, and a clear traverse of lanes, not to be mistaken, 'if he kept a sharp eye open.' The sharpness of his eyes was divided between the sword-belt of the starry Hunter and the shifting lanes that zig-tagged his course below. The Downs ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... glass, Whose depths unsearched, and fountains from the hill, Restore their surface, in itself so still, Until the Earthquake tear the Naiad's cave, Root up the spring, and trample on the wave, And crush the living waters to a mass, The amphibious desert of the dank morass! And must their fate be hers? The eternal change But grasps Humanity with quicker range; 160 And they who fall but fall as worlds will fall, To rise, if just, a Spirit ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... his family, the point is not worth debating. But the bad or good choice of a chancellor, a secretary, an ambassador, a treasurer, and many other officers, is of very high consequence to the whole kingdom; so is likewise that amphibious race of courtiers between servants and ministers; such as the steward, chamberlain, treasurer of the household and the like, being all of the privy council, and some of the cabinet, who according to their talents, their principles, and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... gray herons, the ichthyosaurus, holoptychius, dinotherium, and brontozoum of ancient days. Here and there the river is bordered with low alluvial deposits covered with feathery-topped arrow-grass and amphibious vegetation; but generally the banks are about ten feet high and magnificently wooded; they are abrupt, and land-slides ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... way to Chioggia, and on the right lie the islands of the lagoon. Chioggia itself is hardly more than a village, —a Venice in miniature, like Murano, with canals and boats and bridges. But here the character of life is more amphibious than in brine-bound Venice; and though there is no horse to be seen in the central streets of Chioggia, peasants' teams penetrate her borders by means of a ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... of your viceroy crawls! See, where that new devouring vermin runs, Sent in my anger from the land of Huns! With harpy-claws it undermines the ground, And sudden spreads a numerous offspring round. Th' amphibious tyrant, with his ravenous band, Drains all thy lakes of fish, of fruits thy land. Where is the holy well that bore my name? Fled to the fountain back, from whence it came! Fair Freedom's emblem once, which smoothly flows, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... other man, doubtless this would have been so. But he was as nearly amphibious as a human being can be, and could dive and swim and hold his breath, yes, and see beneath the surface as well as the animal from which he took his name. Never did such gifts stand their owner in better stead than during the minutes of ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... which we were in search is amphibious, and suckles its young like the whale. It is frequently found in pairs with its young, browsing on the marine plants, and sometimes on shore in the cocoanut groves. It is properly called the "manatee," or seacow; measures fifteen feet in length, has two fin-like arms, is covered with hair, ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... Barty, he was all but amphibious, and reminded me of the seal at the Jardin des Plantes. He really seemed to spend most of the afternoon under water, coming up to breathe now and then at unexpected moments, with a stone in his mouth that he had picked up from ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... acquired by these ship-owners, nor that their houses on the south side of the river Dee were stately mansions, full of handsome and substantial furniture. It was also not surprising that the whole town had an amphibious appearance, to a degree unusual even in a seaport. Every one depended on the whale fishery, and almost every male inhabitant had been, or hoped to be, a sailor. Down by the river the smell was almost intolerable to ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... vocative, construed like a substantive, and governing the case of its verb."—Grant's Lat. Gram., p. 70. In the Latin gerund thus defined, there is an appearance of ancient classical authority for that "amphibious species" of words of which so much notice has already been taken. Our participle in ing, when governed by a preposition, undoubtedly corresponds very nearly, both in sense and construction, to this Latin gerund; the principal difference being, that the one is declined, like a noun, and ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... amphibious bird, so well known to most people, that I shall only observe, they are here in prodigious numbers, so that we could knock down as many as we pleased with a stick. I cannot say they are good eating. I have indeed made several good meals of them, but ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... was generally of this amphibious nature. She kept it without hypocrisy in the morning, and broke it without reluctance in the afternoon. As she changed her frock, she wondered whether Cecil was sneering at her; really she must overhaul herself and settle everything ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... from shore, my boat would startle a great amphibious ox standing in the water up to his middle, calmly eating the succulent water grass. To secure it he had to plunge his head and neck well ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... of a Hippopotamus has recently been brought to England, with all the flesh about it, in a high state of preservation. This amphibious animal was harpooned while in combat with a crocodile, in a lake in the interior of Africa. The head measures near four feet long, and eight feet in circumference; the jaws open two feet wide, and the cutting-teeth of which it has ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... places, and treated their guardian as ducklings treat an old hen. At last they quite disappeared from the view round a projecting point of rock, and when she turned it, she found a battle royal going on over an old lobster-pot—Conrade hand to hand with a stout fisher-boy, and Francis and sundry amphibious creatures of both sexes exchanging a hail of stones, water-smoothed brick-bats, cockle-shells, fishes' backbones, and other unsavoury missiles. Abstractedly, Rachel had her theory that young gentlemen had better scramble their way among their poor neighbours, and become ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his are not the eyes by which it is to be found again. If the dignity of Knight of the Shire is to be conferred, he cannot be pronounced a fit person to receive it. For whether, my Brother Freeholders, you look at the humbleness of his situation amongst Country Gentlemen; or at his amphibious habits, in the two elements of Law and Authorship, and the odd vagaries he has played in both; or whether he be tried by the daring opinions which, by his own acknowledgment, he has maintained in Parliament, and at public ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of the water?' is a question very frequently asked, in hot summer weather, by amphibious-looking young men. 'Very,' is the general reply. 'An't you?'—'Hardly ever off it,' is the response, accompanied by sundry adjectives, expressive of the speaker's heartfelt admiration of that element. Now, with all respect for the opinion ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... world-wide reputation for its wonderful instinct and sagacity. The general appearance of this animal is that of a very large muskrat with a broad flattened tail, and the habits of both these animals are in many respects alike. The beaver is an amphibious creature and social in its habits of living, large numbers congregating together and forming little villages, and erecting their dome-like huts like little Esquimaux. The muskrat has this same propensity, but the habitation of the beaver is on a much more ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Jarraries. Arges. Cafezates. Ilicines. Spiders. Cauhares. Pharaoh's mice. Starry lizards. Snakes. Kesudures. Attelabes. Cuhersks, two- Sea-hares. Ascalabotes. tongued adders. Chalcidic newts. Haemorrhoids. Amphibious ser- Footed serpents. Basilisks. pents. Manticores. Fitches. Cenchres. Molures. Sucking water- Cockatrices. Mouse-serpents. snakes. Dipsades. Shrew-mice. Miliares. Salamanders. Stinkfish. Megalaunes. Slowworms. Stuphes. Spitting-asps. Stellions. Sabrins. Porphyri. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... "Amphibious!" exclaimed Roswell Gardiner, in an aside to Mary, as the stranger entered the room, following Baiting Joe's lead. The last only came for his glass of rum-and-water, served with which by the aid of the negro, he passed the ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... stories of the world beyond the sea: how she had been born in a mighty forest, and how proud her folks were of their family tree; how she had been taken from that forest and moulded into the shape she now bore; how she had graced and served a foot in amphibious capacities, until, at last, having seen many things and having travelled much, she had been cast off and hurled into the sea to be the scorn of every crab and the derision of every fish. These stories were all new to the little oyster, and amazing, too; she knew only of the sea, having lived ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... those for whom they are intended. In Mexico, on the march to Orizaba, it had the mortification to trudge along on foot, while midshipmen commanded sections of a light battery, marines were cannoneers, and sailors rode the horses, using, in their amphibious state, the oddest medley of sea-terms and military jargon that ever grated on professional ears. It would have been equally proper to put an artillery captain in command of the frigate Cumberland then lying in the harbor of Vera Cruz, with no less a prospect ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... in the control room of Triplanetary's first super-ship, there was written the first Inter-Systemic Treaty. Upon one side the three Nevians; amphibious, cone-headed, loop-necked, scale-bodies, four-legged things to us monstrosities: upon the other the three humans, air-breathing, rounded-headed, shortnecked, smooth-bodied, two-legged creatures equally monstrous to the fastidious Nevians. Yet each of these representatives, of two races ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... river is no longer lined with continuous palm-groves; desert and swamps take their place—the abode of the amphibious, nomadic, marsh Arab. An unruly customer he is apt to prove himself, and when he is "wanted" by the officials, he retires to his watery fastnesses, where he can remain in complete safety unless betrayed by his ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... being, invented by the Italians, and adopted by the French," says the ingenious Goldoni, "has the exclusive right of uniting naivete with finesse, and no one ever surpassed Florian in the delineation of this amphibious character. He has even contrived to impart sentiment, passion, and morality to his pieces."[43] Harlequin must be modelled as a national character, the creature of manners; and thus the history of such a Harlequin ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... There was a flight of steps leading down to the water at the left of Edna's cottage to a little natural harbor behind the rock masses. No sandy beach was there. One dropped into sea green depths where only the amphibious could feel at home; but Edna was amphibious, and even Miss Lacey's shade hat, firmly tied beneath the chin, was sometimes seen to ride upon the wave as its owner indulged in a stately swim from one point of rock to another. Her mouth ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... sacrificed the passion and passionate flow of poetry to the subtleties of intellect and to the stars of wit; the moderns to the glare and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and heterogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious something, made up, half of image, and half of abstract [5] meaning. The one sacrificed the heart to the head; the other both heart and head ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... never adapted by nature to understand him, it ascends to the former and descends to the latter, through the possession and desertion of intellect. For it becomes familiar both with the divine and brutal likeness, through the amphibious condition of ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... flavoured than any I had seen before, and was, in the opinion of most on board, the highest luxury the sea afforded us. The shell-fish are, muscles, cockles, scallops, cray-fish, and many other sorts, all such as are to be found in every other part of the coast. The only amphibious animals are seals: These are to be found in great numbers about this bay on the small rocks and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I had done so busy a place injustice.' In this opinion his readers who know Yarmouth will agree. Brighton and Hastings and Eastbourne might envy Yarmouth its sandy beach, where you can lead an amphibious life, watching the fishing-smacks as they come to shore with cargoes often so heavy as to be sold for manure; watching the merchant-ships and yachts that lie securely in the Roads, or the long trail of black smoke of Scotch or northern steamers far away; watching the gulls ever skimming the ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... Of four-footed beasts, amphibious creatures, birds, or insects, we had seen nothing. Count Berchtold caught a chameleon, which unfortunately effected its escape from its prison a few days afterwards. At night we frequently heard the howling of jackals, but never experienced any annoyance from them. We ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... perhaps rock- salon, just off the extreme point of Posilippo and where, thanks to a friendliest hospitality, he was to hang ecstatic, through another sublime afternoon, on the wave of a magical wand. Here, as happened, were charming wise, original people even down to delightful amphibious American children, enamelled by the sun of the Bay as for figures of miniature Tritons and Nereids on a Renaissance plaque; and above all, on the part of the general prospect, a demonstration of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... secret," said the judge to himself, "and that secret must be very important. My amphibious friend—since he is neither priest, nor secular, nor convict, nor Spaniard, though he wants to hinder his protege from letting out something dreadful—argues thus: 'The poet is weak and effeminate; he is not like me, a Hercules in diplomacy, and you will easily wring our secret from him.'—Well, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... (scincus), an amphibious animal of the lizard species, and sometimes of the land lizard, or crocodile, is said, when reduced to powder and drunk with sweet wine, to act miraculously in exciting the venereal action; it is also prepared for the same object in the form of the electuary ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... Ornithopods (or "bird-footed"). Each of them then gave birth to an order of quadrupeds. In the spreading waters and rich swamps of the later Triassic some of the Theropods were attracted to return to an amphibious life, and became the vast, sprawling, ponderous Sauropods, the giants in a world of giants. On the other hand, a branch of the vegetarian Ornithopods developed heavy armour, for defence against the carnivores, and became, under the burden of its weight, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... she became a sheldrake duck." The Passamaquoddies, who relate this story, have hardly yet passed out of the stage of thought in which no steadfast boundary is set between men and the lower animals. The amphibious maiden, who dwelt in the bottom of the river, could not be drowned by jumping into the stream; and it is evident that she only resumes her true aquatic form in escaping from her husband, who, it should be added, is himself called Partridge and seems to be regarded ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... father; one that I will second with all my heart," exclaimed Percy, eagerly. "For that amphibious animal looks marvellously like a fish out of water amongst us all: and here we admit no strangers. Edward, there is a vacant seat reserved for you by my mother's side, who looks much as if she would choose you for her ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... tall rampire's artificial pride. Onward methinks, and diligently slow, The firm connected bulwark seems to grow, Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar, Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore. While the pent Ocean, rising o'er the pile, Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile; The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale, The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail, The crowded mart, the cultivated plain, A new creation rescued from his ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... weather, sodden through and through, hungry, cold, many of them ill with a low fever bred by exposure, and only sustained by the knowledge that they were at last upon the Pacific shore. The neighboring Indians were practically amphibious; no stress of weather could hold them in check. They swarmed about the camp at all times, stealing, begging, worrying the worn spirits of the men into tatters. Here, for the first time since leaving St. Louis, it became necessary to abandon conciliatory ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... denied the solar glow 'T were bliss ecstatic To be amphibious—but O, To be aquatic! We're worms, men say, o' the dust, and they That faith are firm of. O, then, be just: show me some dust To be a ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... a species of the fair sex (I believe the only one) who appear to much advantage upon the briny wave; but the nature of our commander's lady not happening to be amphibious, she gave such unequivocal proofs of being out of her proper element, that my wishes for shore increased upon ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... look good to me. I ain't what you might call aquatic by nature—I ain't even amphibious." Alice laughed and the sound was music to the Texan's ears. "That's right, laugh," he hastened to say, and the girl noticed that the cheerfulness was not forced, "I've never heard you laugh much owin' to the fact ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... Manatas Australis, Southern Manati, or Fish-tailed Walrus of naturalists. This singular amphibious animal, or rather aquatic quadruped, inhabits the southern seas of Africa and America, especially near the mouths of rivers, pasturing on aquatic plants, and browsing on the grass which grows close ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... steam up, trucks sealed, and the A.S.C. officer on board ready to start for rail-head with twenty-four hours' supplies. Beyond the maze of "points" is moored the strangest of all rolling-stock, the grey-coated armoured-train, within whose iron walls are domesticated two amphibious ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... of turtles; these latter being a delicacy they greatly prized. The place in which they killed these turtles was called the Galapagar. They fed them in a curious manner: at night there was thrown for them, into a large dry tank, the carcase of a cow or a calf; and such was the voracity of the amphibious animals, that, in the morning, nothing remained of these ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... these slippery denizens, she dragged him under the sea forthwith, unless he could persuade her to compromise on a cave or a lonely rock as a home, for it is reputed that mortals have formally wedded them and raised amphibious families. On the Isle of Man they tell of one caught in a net, who was woman to the waist and fish as to the rest of her. As she sulked in captivity, refusing to eat or speak,—perhaps they forgot to offer raw fish for her supper,—it was decided to let her escape; and as she wriggled ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... hands were Cocopah or Yuma Indians, amphibious, always ready to plunge overboard to help in lightening their craft over any of the numerous sand bars. Mellen told of lying 52 days in one bar and of often being held up for a week. There was no possible mapping of the ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... particularly adroit in extracting the moisture contained in the Cactus melocatus. They push aside the thorns with their hoofs; but sometimes lame themselves in performing this feat.) During the great inundations these same animals lead an amphibious life, surrounded by crocodiles, water-serpents, and manatees. Yet, such are the immutable laws of nature, that their races are preserved in the struggle with the elements, and amid so many sufferings and dangers. When the waters retire, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... we could, for the enemy was gaining on us, and it would be madness to await his attack. I was steering, and I exerted myself to the utmost to get away from the danger and to escape to the shore. But the amphibious beast was approaching so fast that he could almost seize us, when Lindsay, running all risks, fired his gun ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... Ross, laughing, "do you think that all people have been brought up to an amphibious life like yourself? I suppose in your country, what with the rain and the mist, you seldom know whether you ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... recur Wrathfully, thick with a meaning worse Than call to the march: for that inveterate Purse Could kindle the extinct, inform a vacant place, Conjure a heart into the trebly felled. It squeezed the globe, insufferably swelled To feed insurgent Europe: rear and van Were haunted by the amphibious curse; Here flesh, there phantom, livelier after rout: The Seaman piping aye to the rightabout, Distracted Europe's Master, puffed remote Those Indies of the swift Macedonian, Whereon would Europe's Master somewhiles doat, In dreamings ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was the crude fat from animals. Vegetable oils also were burned in the early lamps. The Japanese, for example, extracted oil from nuts. When the demands of civilization increased, extensive efforts were made to obtain the required fats and oils. Amphibious animals of the North and the huge mammals of the sea were slaughtered for their fat, and vegetable sources were cultivated. Later, sperm and colza were the most common oils used by the advanced races. The former is an animal oil obtained from the head cavities of the ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... The vast amphibious city of Tenochtitlan, when at length the Conquerors reached it, confirmed the impression that the land of which it was the capital was another wider and richer Spain. Its teeming markets, "one square twice as large as that ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... into personalities," replied King Sidney, "which are better avoided at all times, I may say that an alliance with a family whose nature is so—er—amphibious could not be seriously ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... hillside trees Said to the winds that touched their leafy keys; Who saw so keenly and so well could paint The village-folk, with all their humors quaint, The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan. Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown; The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown; The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale, And the loud straggler levying his blackmail,— Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, All that lies buried under fifty years. To thee, as is most fit, I bring ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... appearance of this lacustrine and amphibious dwelling was striking, and not without a certain rude and massive grandeur, its grounds and possessions, through which the brother and sister were still picking their way, were even more grotesque and remarkable. Over a space of half a dozen acres the flotsam and jetsam of years of ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... only settled fairly into its stride when the three-arched, twelfth century stone bridge over the Arne was passed, and the road—leaving the last scattered houses of the little town—turned south and seaward skirting the shining expanse of The Haven and threading the semi-amphibious hamlets of Horny Cross ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... inhabitants of another element—if the great ocean were our domain, instead of the narrow limits of the land, our difficulties would be considerably lessened; while, on the other hand, there can be little doubt, although the reader may, perhaps, smile at the bare suggestion of such an idea, that an amphibious being, who should possess our faculties, would still more easily arrive at sound theoretical opinions in geology, since he might behold, on the one hand, the decomposition of rocks in the atmosphere, or the transportation of matter by running water; and, on the other, examine ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... The amphibious are the beaver, the fresh-water and sea-otter, the musk-rat, and a species of long lizard, with sharp teeth, very like the cayman as regards the head and tail, but with a very short body. It is a very fierce animal, killing whatever it attacks, dwelling in damp, shady places, ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... the creeks till the tide was turned, I was greatly alarmed by the men getting into the boat in great disorder and telling me that it was a crocodile which I had for a long time observed, and mistaken for the hull of a tree. A crocodile is an amphibious voracious animal, in shape resembling a lizard. It is covered with very hard scales, which cannot but with difficulty be pierced, except under the belly, where the skin is tender. It has a wide throat, with several rows of teeth, sharp and ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... amphibious joy among the tepid waves he seemed to cast off that sense of unease which had pursued him of late. It was good to inhale the harsh salty savour—to submit himself to these calming voices—to float, like a careless Leviathan, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the microscope to be almost wholly composed of the remains of animals which formerly inhabited the ocean. On the other hand, the animal remains of the beds accompanying the coal are typically the remains of air-breathing, terrestrial, amphibious, or aerial animals, together with those which inhabit fresh or brackish waters. Marine fossils may be found in the Coal-measures, but they are invariably confined to special horizons in the strata, and they indicate temporary depressions of the land beneath the sea. Whilst the ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... thirty feet long, big enough for a trio and their traps, weighs only seventy-five pounds. When the rapid passes into a cataract, when the wall of rock across the stream is impregnable in front, it can be taken in the flank by an amphibious birch. The navigator lifts his canoe out of water, and bonnets himself with it. He wears it on head and shoulders, around the impassable spot. Below the rough water, he gets into his elongated chapeau and floats away. Without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... was astonished to note that he, like my client, spoke in musical numbers. "Very. They're much finer than horses, in my opinion. More peaceful, quite as rapid, and amphibious. If I go out for a drive and come to a lake they trot quite as well across its surface as ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... King of the Mice, after a minute's thought; 'but how is Slow-toes to get across the country in time? Animals like our amphibious host are best in the water; on land he might suffer from his own design, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... happenings of the town and its vicinity went on the same—the same! Annually about one circus ventured in, and vanished, and was gone, even as a passing trumpet-blast; the usual rainy-season swelled the "Crick," the driftage choking at "the covered bridge," and backing water till the old road looked amphibious; and crowds of curious townsfolk straggled down to look upon the watery wonder, and lean awe-struck above it, and spit in it, and turn ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... Levan, only, when I was a tiny little fellow after my mother died, she used to nurse me, and in my childish prattle I somehow got in the habit of calling her Kicksey, and the name became so fixed that my father never spoke of her as Ellen; while our Sam, who was an amphibious being, half fisherman, half gardener, with a mortal hatred of Jonas Uggleston's Bill Binnacle, and the doctor's man, always called her Missers Kicksey ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... home with scythe or oar. Amid such terraqueous conditions it was natural enough that the children should develop a passion for the sea. Like ducks many of them took to the water and became sailors. Abijah was a sailor. The amphibious habits of boyhood gave to his manhood a restless, roving character. Like the element which he loved he was in constant motion. He was a man of gifts both of mind and body. There was besides a strain of romance and adventure in his blood. By nature ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke |
