"Mandible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Heights, for after having tacked off Claw Cape, she had drifted towards the north in the current of the rising tide. One might have said that at this distance she had already entered the vast bay, for a straight line drawn from Claw Cape to Cape Mandible would have ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... the size of a large wood-pigeon, with similar legs and feet, but the form of its body more nearly resembles that of the partridge. The remarkable feature of the bird is that whilst its legs are those of a pigeon, the beak is that of the parrot family, the upper mandible being hooked like the parrot's, the under one being deeply serrated; hence the name, tooth-billed pigeon. This peculiar formation of the beak very materially assists the bird in feeding on the potato-loke ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... Altogether they form a tail of extraordinary length and width which the bird holds slightly elevated, so as to cause it to describe a graceful curve, and the point of which touches the soil. The beak, whose upper mandible is less arched than that of the pheasants, exactly resembles that of the arguses. It is slightly inflated at the base, above the nostrils, and these latter are of an elongated-oval form. In the bird that I have before me the beak, as well as the feet and legs, is ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... head, and general form and size are all those of a songbird,—very much like that master songster, the mockingbird,—yet this bird is a regular Bluebeard among its kind. Its only characteristic feature is its beak, the upper mandible having two sharp processes and a sharp hooked point. It cannot fly away to any distance with the bird it kills, nor hold it in its claws to feed upon it. It usually impales its victim upon a thorn, or thrusts it in the fork of a limb. For the most part, however, its food seems to consist ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... South Atlantic and Gulf States, where it is very abundant; it is frequent in the Middle States, and only occasionally seen in New England. The wings are exceedingly long; they fly in close flocks, moving simultaneously. They seem to feed as they skim low over the water, the under-mandible grazing or cutting the surface, and thus taking in their food.—Vide Coues's Key to North American Birds, Boston, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... and the outside is quite smooth. The manner in which the bird opens these nuts is very curious. Taking one endways in its bill and keeping it firm by a pressure of the tongue, it cuts a transverse notch by a lateral sawing motion of the sharp-edged lower mandible. This done, it takes hold of the nut with its foot, and biting off a piece of leaf retains it in the deep notch of the upper mandible, and again seizing the nut, which is prevented from slipping by the elastic tissue of the leaf, fixes ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace |
