"Fir" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mercy It is not fighting arsie-versie Shall serve thy turn. — This stirr'd his spleen More than the danger he was in, 830 The blows he felt, or was to feel, Although th' already made him reel. Honour, despight; revenge and shame, At once into his stomach came, Which fir'd it so, he rais'd his arm 835 Above his head, and rain'd a storm Of blows so terrible and thick, As if he meant to hash her quick. But she upon her truncheon took them, And by oblique diversion broke them, 840 Waiting ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... as they proceeded for at least a mile along a cart-track through soft-tufted grass and heath and young fir- trees. It ended in a broad open moor, stony; and full of damp boggy hollows, forlorn and desolate under the autumn sky. Here they met Norman again, and walked on along a very rough and dirty road, the ground growing ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... of winter a-cold, Rays of the afternoon sun in a glimmer across the trees; Glittering moist underfoot, the long alley. The firs, one by one, Catch and conceal, as I saunter, and flash in a dazzle of gold Lower and lower the vanishing disc: and the sun alone sees At I wait for my love in the fir-tree ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... of plants are of two kinds. Where we have to deal with a simple pictorial reproduction of plants as symbols (laurel branches, boughs of olive and fir, and branches of ivy), i. e., with a mere characteristic decoration of a technical structure, stress is laid upon the most faithful reproduction of the object possible—the artist is again and again referred to the study of Nature in order ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... fields, it ran along a hollow, and the ground was on each side broken into deep holes with rugged edges; black leafless bushes stood out from the grey and yellow sand, while farther away in the background, against the leaden sky, there was a sombre fringe of thickly planted fir-trees. The daylight, dim at noon, had become dimmer as evening drew near; the grey sky darkened, and the tales of robbery and murder made my thoughts anything but cheerful. As the hills grew higher on each side of us, it occurred to us both that here was a fine place for a murder, and ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... heights of Pindus towered above us; the castle of Yanina rose white and angular from the blue waters of the lake, and the immense masses of black vegetation which, viewed in the distance, gave the idea of lichens clinging to the rocks, were in reality gigantic fir-trees ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... all this, Christmas had come down—the season of gift-making, and glittering Christmas trees, of BOWLE, STOLLEN, and HONIGKUCHEN. For a fortnight beforehand, the open squares and places were set out with fir-trees of all sizes—their pungent fragrance met one at every turn: the shops were ablaze till late evening, crowded with eagerly seeking purchasers; the streets were impassible for the masses of country people that thronged them. Every one ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... o' Bonnykelly's wife." Mastering the situation he runs off to the smith's house, and sains the new mother and her babe. And he is only just in time, for hardly has he finished than a great thud is heard outside. On going out a piece of bog-fir is found,—the image the fairies intended to substitute for the smith's wife. In North German and Danish tales it is the husband who overhears the conspirators at work, and he often has coolness enough to watch their proceedings on his return home ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... belonged,—a pine alike different from those of the earlier carboniferous period and those which exist contemporary with ourselves,—was, some three creations ago, an exceedingly common tree in the country now called Scotland,—as much so, perhaps, as the Scotch fir is at the present day. The fossil trees found in such abundance in the neighborhood of Helmsdale that they are burnt for lime,—the fossil wood of Eathie, in Cromartyshire, and that of Shandwick, in Ross,—all belong to the Pinites Eiggensis. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... It keeps, too, all that half century, a virginal grace of outline, but having once flowered, begins quietly to put away the things of its youth. Years by year the lower rounds of boughs are shed, leaving no scar; year by year the star-branched minarets approach the sky. A fir-tree loves a water border, loves a long wind in a draughty canon, loves to spend itself secretly on the inner finishings of its burnished, shapely cones. Broken open in mid-season the petal-shaped scales show a crimson satin ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... to a giant's stature felled the huge oak with the third stroke of his axe. Wirokannas is 'The Green-robed Priest of the Forest,' and Tapio, who has a coat of tree-moss and a high-crowned hat of fir-leaves, is 'The Gracious God of the Woodlands.' Otso, the bear, is the 'Honey-Paw of the Mountains,' the 'Fur-robed Forest Friend.' In everything, visible and invisible, there is God, a divine presence. There are three worlds, and they are all ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... sun and stars. Then would they read or write, what long melodious hours! or would they pray, what stations on the pine-clad hills! or would they toil, what terraces to build and plant with corn, what flowers to tend, what cows to milk and pasture, what wood to cut, what fir-cones to gather for the winter fire! or should they yearn for silence, silence from their comrades of the solitude, what whispering galleries of God, where never human voice breaks loudly, but winds and streams and lonely birds disturb the awful stillness! ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... and carried a few yards further back from the river, to where the grave was being made ready. Here all was soon prepared; silently, reverently the body was lowered into its shallow resting place; the earth was thrown over it, then a young fir-tree was cut down, shorn of its bark, and driven upright in the ground, and a few streamers of coloured rag or ribbon, furnished by the women, tied on to the top of the pole. The task was ended, and the young mother of twenty-eight years, ...
— Owindia • Charlotte Selina Bompas
... stores in Montreal to be used in the winter's lumber-felling operations. They calculate on cutting 100,000 pine logs. Though the mill has been ten years in operation, the lumber shows no signs of exhaustion; while the other and far more abundant products of the Newfoundland forests, such as fir, spruce, birch, tamarack, etc., ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... crowd, but even there she could see the blaze of light beyond as soon as this was done; and the whole company pressed forward and peeped in. Such a beautiful sight then, her eyes had never beheld. The tree was a generous, large, tall young fir, set in a huge green tub; but whereas in the wood where it grew it had green branches, with fringy, stiff, prickly leaves, now its branches were of every colour and as it were fringed with light. From the lowest bough to the topmost shoot it was a cone of brilliancy and a pyramid ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... of this gentleman, was not particularly enlightened by the comparison. She went lightly and quickly up the steep ascent, and along a furzy ridge which rose imperceptibly skywards, until she came to the fir plantation which sheltered the gamekeeper's cottage. The lattice stood wide open, and a man was leaning with folded arms on the sill as she came in sight, but in a flash the man had gone, and the lattice ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... glow through the room of a hut on a Voshti hill, and the smell of burning fir and camphire wood filtered through the air with a sleepy sweetness. So delicate and faint between the quilts lay the young mother, the little Fanchon, a shining wonder still in her face, and the exquisite touch of birth on her—for when ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... A Fir Tree said boastingly to the Bramble: "You are useful for nothing at all, while I am everywhere used for roofs and houses." The Bramble made answer: "You poor creature, if you would only call to mind the axes and ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... my maid was going to bed, she suddenly saw, in the bright moonlight, a tall figure step out of the shadow of the fir-trees. For an instant a marauding Boer—a daily bugbear for weeks—flashed across her mind, but the next moment she recognized Sergeant Matthews from Setlagoli. He had ridden over post-haste to tell us the Boers were swarming there, and that he and his men had evacuated the barracks. He also ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... not more than a month later in the year when Janetta Colwyn, walking in the plantation near the Red House, came face to face with a man who was leaning against the trunk of a fir-tree, and had been waiting for her to approach. She looked astonished; but he was calm, though he smiled with pleasure, and held ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... had a roomy tenement of brick, Enclose'd with walls, one mile from Hyde Park corner; Fir trees, and yews, were planted round it, thick;— No situation was forlorner![15] Yet, notwithstanding folks might scout it, It suited qualmish Spinsters, who fell sick, And didn't wish the ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... A figure with a serpent's tail and a monstrous head, founded on a Negro type, hollow-cheeked, large-lipped, and wearing a cap made of a serpent's skin, holding a fir-cone in its hand. ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... and cheaper ships could be built in the seaports of Massachusetts than anywhere in Great Britain. An oak vessel could be built at Gloucester or Salem for twenty-four dollars per ton; a ship of live-oak or American cedar cost not more than thirty-eight dollars per ton. On the other hand, fir vessels built on the Baltic cost thirty-five dollars per ton, and nowhere in England, France, or Holland could a ship be made of oak for less than fifty dollars per ton. Often the cost was as high as sixty dollars. It was not strange, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... saw some villas in one of those ravishing bays that one meets at every turn of the mountain; there were only four or five fronting the sea at the foot of the mountains, and behind them a wild fir wood slopes into two great valleys, that were untraversed by roads. I stopped short before one of these chalets, it was so pretty: a small white house with brown trimmings, overrun with rambler roses up to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... where the warm sun and the fresh air made a sweet resting place, grew a pretty little fir tree. The situation was all that could be desired; and yet it was not happy, it wished so much to be like its tall companions, the pines and firs which grew ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... down the road, and Madison, with a sort of speculative flip to the ash of his cigar, resumed his way. Just across the bridge he found the wagon track, and turned into it. It ran through a thick wood of fir and spruce, and here, apart from now being able to see but little before him—he had elected to "steal" away in the darkness after supper—he found the going ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... were heavy with snow, that had fallen fitfully when the wind lulled. Untrodden snow lay up to the porch; there was no sight nor sound of any human being. Sweyn strained his eyes far and near, only to see dark sky, pure snow, and a line of black fir trees on a hill brow, bowing down before the wind. "It must have been the wind," he ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... The fir trees, gathering closer in the shadows, Listened in every spray, While the whole camp, with "Nell" on English meadows, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... through various channels formed by islands, some of which were without a tree, while others were covered with spruce, fir, and other trees. The banks, which were about six feet above the surface of the river, displayed a face of solid ice intermixed with veins of black earth, and as the heat of the sun melted the ice, ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... "we must make some pitch. There is no great difficulty about that. There are plenty of fir trees growing near the edges of the swamps, and from the roots of these ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... boards that was Dean Rawson's "office" had a second canopy roof built above it and extending out on all sides like a wooden umbrella. Thick pitch fried almost audibly from the fir boards when the sun drove straight from overhead, but beneath their shelter the ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... after Mrs. Barbauld wrote, one man, pre-eminent amongst poets, used to stand upon this hill-top, and lo! as Turner gazed, a whole generation gazed with him. For him Italy gleamed from behind the crimson stems of the fir-trees; the spirit of loveliest mythology floated upon the clouds, upon the many changing tints of the plains; and, as the painter watched the lights upon the distant hills, they sank into his soul, and he painted them ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... summons to his mate, telling her that the hour had come when they should seek their prey. From the lair behind the rock, where the cubs were being suckled by their dam, came no immediate answer. Only a pair of crows, that had their nest in a giant fir-tree across the gulf, woke up and croaked harshly their indignation. These three summers past they had built in the same spot, and had been nightly awakened to vent the ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white. Every pine and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... crotches the shape of the cambium cells determines the nature of the grain beneath as shown in figure 3 (Ref. 1). This has been established also in the study of the nature of spiral-grained Douglas Fir and in various experimental work where it has been possible to change the direction or extent of the cambium cells through ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... (speaking low,) "to keep the bonny house o' Traquair in order, an' she canna be got for a carlin keeper, a wink to Christie's Will will bring her here, unscathed by sun or wind, in suner time than a priest could tie the knot, or a lawyer loose it. Is sic a man a meet burden for a fir wuddy, my Lord?" ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... with many similar resorts, such as Sydenham in London, Central Park, New York, or the Bois de Boulogne, Paris. Here semi-arctic and semi-tropical plants and trees are found growing together, and all parts of the world seem to be liberally represented. The hardy Scotch fir and delicate palm crowd each other; the india-rubber-tree and the laurel are close friends; the California pine and the Florida orange thrive side by side; so with the silvery fern-tree of New Zealand, and the ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... said Laura. Then she added stoutly, "I like it in spite of Lucy; or, rather, I like Lucy as much as anything else belonging to the school. I hope," she continued as they paced slowly under the fir-trees, "that you are not really anxious about Jane. I know that you ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... property captured by privateers, were made; and it was determined that the list of contraband articles should include, besides ammunition and warlike implements, all articles serving directly for the equipment of vessels, except unwrought iron and fir-plank. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... pliant to the lines and curves of grace, when happily and picturesquely grouped, are almost bewilderingly beautiful. Yet perhaps that which contains in itself the greatest number of the elements of beauty, is the medium-sized pyramidal tree, be it of spruce, Norway pine, or balsam fir. It unites at once, in its pyramidal shape, the strength and majesty of the old, and in its gracefully curved limbs and abundant leaves, the beauty and freshness of the young tree. When loaded down with a spotless burden of snow until its limbs are almost ready ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Eversley,[31] he had his home for thirty-three years at this Hampshire village so intimately connected with his name. Eversley lies on the borders of Berkshire and Hampshire, in the diocese of Winchester, near the famous house of Bramshill, on the edge of the sandy fir-covered waste which stretches across Surrey. To understand the charm of its rough commons and self-sown woods one must read Kingsley's Prose Idylls, especially the sketch called 'My Winter Garden'. There he served for a year as curate, living in bachelor quarters on the green, learning ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... a beautiful girl, and was as tall and straight as a young fir-tree. When she was eighteen years old her father called her to him and said: 'You are of an age now, my daughter, to marry and settle down; but as I love you more than anything else in the world, ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... the thicket, he saw now something that he had been too much agitated to observe before,—a column of dense smoke that rose from far down the declivity, and seemed to make haste to hide itself among the low-hanging boughs of a clump of fir-trees. ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... peninsula, about midway between Cape Canceau and Cape Sable. It is one of the most secure and commodious havens in the whole world, and well situated for the fishery; yet the climate is cold, the soil barren, and the whole country covered with woods of birch, fir, pine, and some oak, unfit for the purposes of timber; but at the same time extremely difficult to remove and extirpate. Governor Cornwallis no sooner arrived in this harbour than he was joined by two regiments ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... lakes. Boeotia mourns The loss of Dirce: Argos Amymone: Corinth laments Pirene. Nor yet safe Were rivers bounded by far distant shores, Tanais' midmost waves fume to the sky; And ancient Peneus smokes: Ismenos swift; Caicus, Teuthrantean; and the flood Of Phocis, Erymanthus: Xanthus too, Doom'd to be fir'd again: Lycormas brown; Maeander's sportive oft recircling waves; Mygdonian Melas; and the Spartan flood, Eurotas; with Euphrates burn: and burn, Orontes; and the rapid Thermodoon; Ganges; and Phasis; and the Ister swift. Alpheus boils; the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... this operation that both of them acquire a greater degree of consistence. Pitch, tar, and turpentine, are the most common resins; they exude from the pine and fir trees. Copal, mastic, and frankincense, are also of ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... wooden spout on to the roadside." "The spot where we pitched our tents was near a sort of small natural terrace, at the summit of a steep slope above the road, backed by a mossy bank, shaded by brushwood and skirting the dense foliage of the dark forest of pine and fir, above our camp." "We gave two of the peasants some brandy and tobacco." "Then all our visitors left, except four interesting young peasant girls, who still lingered." "They had all pleasant voices." "We listened to them with much pleasure; there was so much sweetness and feeling ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... 2, and consists predominantly of pinyon pine, Pinus edulis Engelm., and Utah juniper, Juniperus osteosperma (Torr.) Little. More sheltered areas along the North Rim and in most of the canyons support scattered small stands of Douglas fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii (Merb.) Franco. These are the "spruce trees" of Spruce Tree Canyon. An occasional ponderosa pine, Pinus ponderosa Laws., represents a vestige of more montane species of plants and animals ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson
... me among the pines, I wakened thirsty. My tin was standing by me, half full of water. 5 I emptied it at a draft. The stars were clear, colored and jewellike, but not frosty. A faint silvery vapor stood for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness of the packsaddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at the 10 length of the tether; I could hear her steadily munching at the sward; but there was not another sound, save ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... reed I tuned on the hill, My grief for the rough slopes of Sunnach so still, The wind in the fir tree and bleat of the ewe Are lost in the wild cry my heart makes for you. The brown floors I danced on, the sheds where I lay, Are gone from my mind like a wing in the bay: Dear lady, I'd herd the wild swans in the skies If they knew of lake water ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... the hill they stopped short, and only began a new tune when there was a new departure. We were rather glad when the day came to an end. In the Black Forest you always know where there is a wedding, because two small fir trees are brought from the forest decked with flying coloured streamers of paper or ribbon, and set on either side of ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... fir was his tree of hallowed memory. Its odour never failed, and he slept that night with its influence ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... has crossed the brook and climbed an upward slope into the meadow beyond it, one enters a thick fir-wood full of fragrant shadow; at the end is a bank, green and high, crowned by a hedge, and all at once the quiet of ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... which took place when he was seventy-eight, Borrow's Oulton home was pulled down. All that now remains to mark the spot where it once stood are the old summer-house in which he wrote Lavengro, and the ragged fir-trees that sighed the requiem of his last hours. Without appealing to "the shires," but in the Eastern counties alone, he has been commemorated since his death by such writers as Henry Dutt, and Whitwell Elwin, by Egmont ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... becomes unutterably wild and desolate. Forest trees are now replaced for miles and miles by low withered scrub and dwarf fir-trees on either side of the river. As we proceed the Lena gradually widens until it resembles a succession of huge lakes, where even our practised drivers have some difficulty in finding the way. The Russian language ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... colored, and jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint silvery vapour stood for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir-points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness of the pack-saddle I could see Modestine walking round and round at the length of her tether; I could hear her steadily munching at the sward; but there was not another sound save the indescribable ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... very often crossed the moor, for the farm was on the other side of it, and the milk and butter had all to be fetched from it, the milk twice a day, whether the sun blazed, or the chilly Scottish drizzle blotted out the hills in a misty haze, or the north wind swept across it, and shook the gaunt fir-trees to and fro in ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... in its own way a more distinctive and interesting bit of Scotland than the bleak Lothian country, with its wide views, its brown ploughed fields, and its dense swaying plantations of fir. The Lammermoor Hills and the Pentlands and the veils of smoke that lie about Edinburgh are on its horizon, and within that circle all the large quietude of open grain fields, wide turnip lands, where sheep ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... balsam forests with their whiffs of fir and pine; He may sail the tossing oceans and inhale their breaths of brine; He may walk the rosy valleys, climb the mountains to the snow, But if once the prairies grab him they will never let ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... be absorbed in business, to the exclusion of every other thought. But sometimes, as we wandered along the boulevard, and among the rows, we found the ground of the Gostinny Dvor strewn with fresh sprays of fragrant fir, which we took at first to be a token that a funeral had occurred among some of the merchants' clerks who lived over the shops. However, it appeared that a holy picture had been carried along the rows, and into the shops of those who desired its blessing on their trade, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... I was walking up the long hill which leads to the high ground from Laragh to Sugar Loaf. The solitude was intense. Towards the top of the hill I passed through a narrow gap with high rocks on one side of it and fir trees above them, and a handful of jagged sky filled with extraordinarily brilliant stars. In a few moments I passed out on the brow of the hill that runs behind the Devil's Glen, and smelt the fragrance of the bogs. I mounted again. There was not light enough to show the mountains round me, ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... calyx of a moss-rose, which suddenly appears through bud-variation on a Provence-rose, with the gall of red moss growing from the inoculated leaf of a wild rose, with each filament symmetrically branched like a microscopical spruce-fir, bearing a glandular tip and secreting odoriferous gummy matter.[708] Or compare, on the one hand, the fruit of the peach, with its hairy skin, fleshy covering, hard shell and kernel, and on the other hand one of the more complex galls with its epidermic, spongy, and woody layers, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... relative in Staffordshire the changes consequent on planting several hundred acres with Scotch fir were remarkable. In twenty-five years twelve species of conspicuous plants, and six different insectivorous birds had become settled and flourishing inhabitants in the plantations. The characteristic of the philosopher, ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... along the main road, as if you were making back for Paris, until you come to four cross-roads with a sign-post pointing to Courbevoie. Turn down there and go along the road until you meet a close spinney of fir-trees on your right. Make for the interior of that. It gives splendid shelter, and you can dismount there and give the horses a feed. We'll join you one hour after midnight. The night will be dark, I hope, and the moon anyhow ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... fact that the stumps of felled fir trees occasionally continue to grow, and to deposit fresh zones of wood over the stump, depends on similar facts. In Abies pectinata, says Goeppert,[57] the roots of different individuals frequently ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... dogs seemed to leap into new life at his words, and the leader replied with a whining joyous cry as the odors of balsam and fir came to him. The sharp pinnacles of the forest, reaching up into the night's white glow, grew more and more distinct as the sledge sped on, and five minutes later the team drew up in a huddled, panting bunch on the shore. That day ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... fuschias carried one's thoughts back to pleasant days spent in Devonshire dales. From the lawns sweet-smelling violets perfumed the air. Matchless orchids clung to the trees, and the delicate maiden-hair fern held its own with the hardier varieties. Dusky fir-trees, groups of Australian araucarias, and Japanese oak trees and chestnuts set off the brightness of the flower beds. In the park there is a beautiful pond, from the centre of which a fountain throws a crystal spray to catch the sun's rays and ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... in the wind and sleet, Out in the woods of fir and spruce and pine, Down in the hot slopes of the dripping mine We dreamed of you and Oh, the dream was sweet! And now you bless the felon food we eat And make each iron cell a sacred shrine; For when your love thrills in the blood like wine, ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... quite excited, for I'd got to have a sneakin' sort o' pity for the miserable critter. 'It's a twin roar to the one he gave that day when he mistook Hairy Sam for a grizzly b'ar, an' went up a spruce-fir like a squirrel.' Sure enough, in another moment Miffy burst out o' the woods an' came tearin' across the open space straight for the gap, followed by a dozen or ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... a small vessel of about ninety tons, we discover that she is upwards of two hundred; that her breadth of beam is enormous; and that those spars, which appeared so light and elegant, are of unexpected dimensions. Her decks are of narrow fir planks, without the least spring or rise; her ropes are of Manilla hemp, neatly secured to copper belaying-pins, and coiled down on the deck, whose whiteness is well contrasted with the bright green paint of her bulwarks: ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... ceased crying and with a start looked up, feeling that she was no longer alone. Her instincts had not deceived her, for in the shadow of the fir trees, not more than two paces from her, was the figure of a man. Just then he took a step to the left, which brought his outline against the sky, and Ida's heart stood still, for now she knew him. It was Harold Quaritch, the man over whose loss ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... while we were speaking, to a part of the park through which there flowed a rivulet of clear water. On the further bank, the open ground led down into a wooded valley. On our side of the stream rose a thick plantation of fir-trees intersected by a winding path. Captain Stanwick stopped as we reached the place. His eyes rested, in the darkening twilight, on the narrow space pierced by the path among the trees. On a sudden he lifted his right hand, with the same cry of pain which we had heard before; with his ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... which are five or six inches apart, and the stem and stern, are of whalebone; and they are covered with the skins of the seal or walrus sewed neatly together. When driftwood can be found, they employ it. The paddle is double, and made of fir, the edges of the blade being covered with hard bone ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... Lillies spring, and sudden Verdure rise; And Starts, amidst the thirsty Wilds, to hear, New Falls of Water murmuring in his Ear: On rifted Rocks, the Dragon's late Abodes, The green Reed trembles, and the Bulrush nods. Waste sandy Vallies, once perplexd with Thorn, [8] The spiry Fir and shapely Box adorn: To leafless Shrubs the flow'ring Palms succeed, And od'rous Myrtle to the noisome Weed. The Lambs with Wolves shall graze the verdant Mead [9] And Boys in flow'ry Bands the Tyger lead; The Steer and Lion at ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... evidently designed for our profit in the state where such communication is made. This improvement of the moral and religious state of man was the evident design of the revelation of God, and to this agree all the prophets. "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the briar shall ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... without let or hindrance from other points of view. But even his thorough-going methods compel him to stop short at certain points, and to admit that he has come across historic fact. Thus he agrees that the Fir-Bolgs "were not really gods but the pre-Aryan race which the Gaels, when they landed in Ireland, found already in occupation,"[148] and yet when he treats of the fight of the Fir-Bolgs with the Tuatha de Danann, and is confronted with Sir William Wilde's proofs that the monuments ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... used by the Indians with success in cases of snow-blindness, but its application to the inflamed eye produces much pain. Of pines the white spruce is the most common here: the red and black spruce, the balsam of Gilead fir, and Banksian pine also occur frequently. The larch is found only in swampy spots and is stunted and unhealthy. The canoe birch attains a considerable size in this latitude but from the great demand for its wood to make sledges it has become rare. The ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... when David and Betty were up the brook, Jasper remained closer than usual to Creekdale, where a number of men were working. Opposite them a small island nestled out in the river, called "Emerald" Island by reason of its rich covering of fir, pine and birch trees. As a rule, Jasper paid strict attention to his duties, but to-day his mind often wandered and he would stand gazing out over the water to ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... time when the want of powder gave our men reason to apprehend that they must fall a prey to hunger, as they had nearly consumed those reindeer they had killed. This lucky circumstance was attended with another equally fortunate; they found on the shore the root of a fir-tree, which nearly approached to the figure of a bow. As necessity has ever been the mother of invention, so they soon fashioned this root to a good bow by the help of a knife; but still they wanted ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... justified sooner than she had expected. Mrs. Pettifer was not surprised at Harold Hazlewood's swift change any more than her husband had been. Harold, to her thinking, was a sentimentalist and sentimentality was like a fir-tree—a thing of no deep roots ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... walls, a clump of fir trees, and a bank of brambles screened him from any chance passer-by, and he now and again peered through a crevice on to a path through the woods, cautiously, as if fearful to venture forth. His face was pale beneath ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Assyria cannot be contemplated firmly by a prophet of Israel. The fact is too great, too wonderful. It overthrows him, dashes him into a confused element of dreams. All the world is, to his stunned thought, full of strange voices. 'Yea, the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, "Since thou art gone down to the grave, no feller is come up against us."' So, still more, the thought of the presence of Deity cannot ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... move—they shake, Totter, and vacillate, and shake, And wrenched by giant force, come down Like a disrupted mountain's crown, With cornice, frieze, and chapiter, Girder, and spangled dome, and wall, Ceiling of gold, and roof of fir, Crumbled in mighty ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... ocean on the north and south, and the Brahmapootra and Indus, on the east and west, wherein the primeval race was received. We will not dispute the story. We are pleased to read in the natural history of the country, of the "pine, larch, spruce, and silver fir," which cover the southern face of the Himmaleh range; of the "gooseberry, raspberry, strawberry," which from an imminent temperate zone overlook the torrid plains. So did this active modern life have even then a foothold and ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... under wine drunk at that fir table. The doctor was the medical attendant of Colonel Graeme, and this gave him means of working upon his conscience; and I know they have been at this ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his root was by many waters. The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the plane trees were not as his branches; nor was any tree like unto him in beauty: so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea those nations shall be utterly wasted. The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box-tree together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary: and I will make the place of my feet glorious. The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee: and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... hardy of European plants, is a true tree at heart none the less for all that. Soft and succulent as it looks in branch and leaf, you may yet count on it sometimes as many rings of annual growth as on a lordly Scotch fir-tree. But where? Why, underground. For see how cunning it is, this little stunted descendant of proud forest lords: hard-pressed by nature, it has learnt to make the best of its difficult and precarious position. It has a woody trunk at core, like all other ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... during the first day, and we passed the night at a newly cleared farm, five miles from home. But cattle-tracks were discovered in dense fir woods near a large brook during the following morning; and after following them for two hours we came upon the whole herd, snugly sheltered in the ox ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... the fir and the pine, flourish most in the mountains on account of the eager air, while in this region where it is more temperate the poplars and the willows thrive best. Again the arbute and the oak prefer the more fertile lands, while the almond and the fig trees love the lowlands.[61] The growth ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... care of his own. Little didst thou need, in thy native land, the isle of the three capes, little didst thou need but sunlight on land and sea. Death can have shown thee naught dearer than the fragrant shadow of the pines, where the dry needles of the fir are strewn, or glades where feathered ferns make "a couch more soft than Sleep." The short grass of the cliffs, too, thou didst love, where thou wouldst lie, and watch, with the tunny watcher till the deep blue sea was broken by the burnished sides of the ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... estate of a relation where I had ample means of investigation, there was a large and extremely barren heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man; but several hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five years previously, and planted with Scotch fir. The change in the native vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable,—more than is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to another; not only the proportional numbers of the heath plants were wholly changed, but twelve ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... beech, hornbeam, etc. Efforts were made to increase the production of truffles by planting certain regions to these trees. Especially in certain calcareous districts of France (see Cooke, Fungi, etc., p. 260) young plantations of oak, beech, or beech and fir, after the lapse of a few years, produced truffles. The spores of the truffles are in the soil, and the mycelium seems to maintain some symbiotic relation with the roots of the young trees, which results in the increase ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... I think that there is a connecting link between the old pine and fir forest of bygone ages and the origin of petroleum ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... they had their coffee on the terrace, and watched the sun setting behind the fir woods, and when the last yellow gleam had faded away from the sky, at Dinah's suggestion Elizabeth went into the drawing-room, where two pink-shaded lamps were already lighted, and seated ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... an empty pane among the coloured pieces of the window through which, now and then, the wind blew powdery snow. She put her eyes to it and looked out upon a great bare moorland, white under a cold winter moon. Here and there sprang a fir tree, but for the most part the land stretched away to the horizon, empty as death—and as chill. So close to her eye that she must hold her head back in order to see it, rose a great square tower with stretches of tiled roof, mostly ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... fir tree, whose high branches almost touched the roof, knew all about those shadows, but it was so old no one could ever understand a word of the ...
— The Night Before Christmas and Other Popular Stories For Children • Various
... use inferior kinds of bark. But the finest type was always made, and is still made, with birch-bark. At least three kinds of tree are necessary for the best results: the birch for the skin, the fir to caulk it with, and the cedar for the sewing fibres and the frame. Only a single tool is needed—a knife; and many a good canoe was built before the whites brought metal knives from Europe. The Indian looks out for the {21} biggest, soundest, and smoothest birch tree in his neighbourhood. He ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... damn'd gun! I took it down one morn— A desperate deal of harm they did my corn! Our testy Squire too loved to save the breed, So covey upon covey eat my seed. I mark'd the mischievous rogues, and took my aim, I fir'd, they fell, and—up the keeper came. That cursed morning brought on my undoing, I went to prison and my farm to ruin. Poor Mary! for her grave the parish paid, No tomb-stone tells where her cold corpse is ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... curving ridge that carries the forest up to some highest peak. We were lucky in hitting the saddle, but we could see a little to the south the sharp, steep neck of the steed sweeping up toward the sky with an erect mane of balsam fir. ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... the city. Visitors, some of them tourists from America, made the rounds under the guidance of old soldiers. The sergeant followed such a group of sight-seers through a postern behind the armory and out onto the cliff. There he lounged under a fir-tree above St. Margaret's Well and smoked a dandified cigar, while Bobby explored the promenade and ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... until only the topmost trees were touched with fire. Then these too lost it, and all the forest around us seemed to have a pale-blue mist stealing over it as the night fell and the twilight faded out of the sky overhead. Presently the long undulations of fir grew black, the stars came out, and the sound of the stream could be heard distantly in the hollow; and then, at Tita's wish, we went off for a last stroll in among the soft moss and under the darkness of the pines, now and again starting some great capercailzie, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... brilliant blue sky, the arbutus glowed with their scarlet berries, and the pine-trees became more tall, straight, and numerous. No wonder that the Assyrian king, when he boasted of being able to cut down the cedars of Lebanon, included also "the choice fir-trees thereof," (2 Kings ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... port arms the soldier replied: "This is post number seven. You'll find post number one at that building under the fir-tree. That's the guard-house. Report, first, to the ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... mountains closed in the sky-line, and all bathed in the soft light of the moon, made a picture of extreme beauty and loneliness—a solid wilderness, shut in from the busy world without. There was a musty smell, as if the room had not been used in years, and he lifted the sash. The rich perfume of fir and balsam was wafted ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... remember, I remember The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky: It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from Heaven Than ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... and apparently interminable extent. It is the triumph of landscape gardening, and never more beautiful than in this autumn sunset, lighting up the ruddy beech and the spotted sycamore, and gilding the shining fir-cones that hang so thickly amongst the dark pines. The robins are singing around us, as if they too felt the magic of the hour. How gracefully the road winds through the leafy labyrinth, leading imperceptibly to the ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... dwindled from the sight. 'Mid the tall meadow grass the ox reclined, Or bent his knee, or from beneath the shade Of the broad beech, with ruminant mouth, gazed forth. Rustling with wealth, a tissue of fair fields, Outstretch'd to left and right in luxury; And the fir forests on the upland slopes Contrasted darkly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... wooded lands at the North—the kind with leaves rising in whorls, and that with a stem covered with bristle-like spikes. This last variety has leaves, not very abundant,—which resemble a sprig of young fir, and is sometimes called "ground-fir." It is of a deep rich green color, but not so graceful for trimming as the other kind. Besides the creeping green, there are many varieties of what children call "tree-green," independent little plants rooted deep in the mould, which send up a single ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Giraldus Cambrensis, in a work entitled "Topographia Hiberniae," written in Latin, remarks concerning "many birds which are called Bernacae: against nature, nature produces them in a most extraordinary way. They are like marsh geese, but somewhat smaller. They are produced from fir timber tossed along the sea, and are at first like gum. Afterward they hang down by their beaks, as if from a seaweed attached to the timber, surrounded by shells, in order to grow more freely," Giraldus is here evidently ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... for half a mile upon its crest, racing straight toward the east, dropped down into another valley ten times bigger than the one she had just quitted, and still following the trail headed southward again. Here there were fewer trees, a sprinkling of pine and fir, and wider open spaces. Another stream, even smaller than Echo Creek, watered the valley. She rode through a small herd of saddle horses that flashed away before her swift approach, their manes and tails flying, and scarcely realised that she had disturbed them. Off to her left, at the ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... wind. It was spring now, and the year was a forward one, so that the trees were well leaved by the end of April. It was as warm as a summer day, and we were the more surprised when we saw a huge fire roaring upon the grass-plot before the Major's door. There was half a fir-tree in it, and the flames were spouting up as high as the bedroom windows. Jim and I stood staring, but we stared the more when out came the Major, with a great quart pot in his hand, and at his heels ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... minutes he rode as he had never ridden before. And then he came upon them. They stood at the base of a fir-balsam, whose gnarled limbs spread flatly outward—three Circle Bar men, a half dozen from the various outfits whose herds grazed his range, and the rustler—Greasy—a rope knotted about his neck, standing directly ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... father read to us that night, I remember well, was out of the book of Ezekiel, in which the prophet dealt with the city of Tyrus, and denounced the judgments of the Lord on her pride and luxury, on her ships of fir and cedar with sails of purple embroidery, on her mariners and men of war, on her merchandise of silver and brass, of horses and mules, of ebony and precious stones, and of honey and oil and wine and spices ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... the south-east corner of the house; one of its windows looking to the south front of the college and the chapel with its slender spire; the other window looking over the garden and a waste of heather beyond, to the fir-crowned hill of Ambarrow. My father had been Headmaster for twelve years and was nearing the end of his time there; and I was myself nine years old, and shortly to go to a private school, where my elder brother Martin already was. My two sisters, ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... like a porcupine's quills. It looks beautiful in the woods, but it wouldn't look so pretty in the parlor. And that cedar yonder is too thick to hang the presents and the ornaments on.—Yes, that hemlock is pretty, and that fir—but I guess we'll stick to the spruce. Let's find one that's shapely ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... and pleasures. Something, we feel, should happen; we know not what, yet we proceed in quest of it. And many of the happiest hours of life fleet by us in this vain attendance on the genius of the place and moment. It is thus that tracts of young fir, and low rocks that reach into deep soundings, particularly torture and delight me. Something must have happened in such places, and perhaps ages back, to members of my race; and when I was a child I tried in vain to invent appropriate games for ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... decked with lilacs and tulips was spread for tea. In other cheery catacombs we found neat rows of bunks, mess-tables, sizzling sauce-pans over kitchen-fires. Everywhere were endless ingenuities in the way of camp-furniture and household decoration. Farther down the road a path between fir-boughs led to a hidden hospital, a marvel of underground compactness. While we chatted with the surgeon a soldier came in from the trenches: an elderly, bearded man, with a good average civilian face—the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... Alice, which made her laugh, yet colour up to her eyes, through a complexion well en-browned by sun and wind, Evan intimated his commands that the fish should be prepared for breakfast. A spark from the lock of his pistol produced a light, and a few withered fir branches were quickly in flame, and as speedily reduced to hot embers, on which the trout was broiled in large slices. To crown the repast, Evan produced from the pocket of his short jerkin a large scallop shell, and from under the folds of his ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the river nearly two miles, when, coming to a little stream which flows into the larger, I turned into it to explore its course. Fir and hemlock of a century's growth met overhead, and formed an archway radiant with frost-work. All was dark within; but I was young and fearless, and I laughed and shouted with ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... music his wife led him in Unto the sweet-smelling birches! Unto the flowers and still deeper in Under the fir-forest's churches! ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... trouble us, unless we meet them in large numbers." Thereupon they set about getting fuel for their fire. Besides collecting some of the dead wood that was lying all about, they split up a number of resinous pine and fir trees with explosive bullets from their revolvers, so that soon they not only had a roaring fire, but filled the back part of the cave with logs to dry, in case they should camp there again at some later day. Neither Cortlandt nor Bearwarden felt much like sleeping, and so, after finishing ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... helping Frank, and presently both came running up with lighted fir-torches, which Tom at once flung over the gate, together with pieces of burning peat and wood. These did splendid work, and after a time ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables
... white with heat, A forest fir's length—ready for his feet. Unflinching as a rock he steps along The burning mass, and sings his wild war song; Sings, as he sang when once he used to roam Throughout the forests of his southern home, Where, down ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson |
