"Reptile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that alligator wish he'd never caught Bawly!" exclaimed Sammie, working very quickly, for the savage reptile was fast swimming away ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... embryonic growth (and both these principles can be shown to be probable from direct evidence), that most wonderful fact in the whole round of natural history, namely, the similarity of members of the same great class in their embryonic condition,—the embryo, for instance, of a mammal, bird, reptile, and fish being barely ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... and everything felt cold and clammy to the touch. It seemed just the night when it befitted such a being as the Jew to be abroad. As he glided stealthily along, creeping beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the hideous old man seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and darkness through which he moved: crawling forth, by night, in search of some rich offal ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... the highest earthly court, the Christian Church. He felt sure of sympathy and succor from this source. The Church had stood through the centuries as a refuge for the unfortunate and afflicted. But, alas! the Church shrank from the Negro as if he had been a reptile. If he gained admission it was to the "Negro pew" in the "organ loft." If he secured the precious "emblems of the broken body and shed blood" of his Divine Master, it was after the "white folks" were through. If the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... the masts clustering thick in the small harbour. A good breeze, which had risen with the sea, carried us triumphantly through the intricacies of the passage; and we had soon brought up not far from the landing-stairs. I remember to have remarked an ugly-horned reptile of a modern warship in the usual moorings across the port, but my mind was so profoundly plunged in melancholy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... waters flowed past them with swelling undulations, from the direction of the mountains. Oceaxe knelt down on the bank, and peered into the depths. Presently her look became tense and concentrated; she dipped her hand in and pulled out some sort of little monster. It was more like a reptile than a fish, with its scaly plates and teeth. She threw it on the ground, and it started crawling about. Suddenly she darted all her will into her sorb. The creature leaped into the air, and ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... most fatal of the New Holland snakes; the animal bitten seldom recovers. The Aborigines have a great dread of this reptile; they however eat of it if they kill it themselves, but there is a superstition amongst them about snakes, which prevents their eating them ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Edith had passed around the sliding door and thought herself unobserved, an expression of intense disgust came out upon her expressive face, and with her lace handkerchief she rubbed the hand he had kissed, as if removing the slime of a reptile; and the large mirror at the further end of the room had faithfully reflected the suggestive little pantomime. He saw and ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... said I, "your mentioning serpents reminds me that I have not seen a reptile of any kind since I came to this part of ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... rang the jingle-bell, and the boat soon came down to half-speed. The five hunters, including Achang, had their rifles ready for use, though they still retained their seats. The reptile was not asleep; and he appeared to have some notions of his own, for he was not disposed to wait for the coming of the boat. He settled down in the dark water so that he could not be seen, but the surface was disturbed by ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... nothing, sir! nothing at all! Only Miss Lacordere has been good to us—which it's more than can be said for everybody! (Scowls at MRS. C. JAMES proceeds to lift THOMAS. She flies at him.) Put the old gentleman down, you sneakin' reptile! How many doors have you been a hearkenin' at since mornin'—eh, putty-lump? You touch the old man again, and I'll mark you! Here, Bill! I'll take his head—you take his feet. We'll carry him between us like ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... forced three rail trains from the tracks and shot down engineers with their hands on the valves? Communism. For hundreds of miles along the track leading from the great West I saw stretched out and coiled up the great reptile which, after crushing the free locomotive of passengers and trade, would have twisted itself around our republican institutions, and left them in strangulation and blood along the pathway of nations. The governors ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... presents to each other, sweetmeats and parched grain are distributed among the poor. High and low give the night to gambling. The belief is entertained that if they fail to spend the night in this manner they will in their next birth be turned into frogs, or some vile reptile. ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... to tell him all that he had seen and suspected. The scorpion really settled the question for him, for the professor had scarcely finished injecting Dick's leg than he turned his attention to the dead reptile, at which he had already cast many curious glances as it lay on his little camp-table beside his medicine chest. And now he proceeded to examine it thoroughly, lighting a powerful acetylene ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... of interest at Rusthall Common is the group of rocks, of which the largest, the Toad Rock, bears a most singular resemblance to the reptile from which it is named. The High Rocks, situated further on, and just in the county of Sussex, are also very remarkable, rising from 30 to 60 ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... possesses four of such glands; they vary in size according to the age of the reptile, but they are generally about as large as a hazel-nut, when dried. Two glands are situated in the groin, and two in the throat, a little in advance of the fore-legs. I have noticed two species of crocodiles throughout all the rivers of Abyssinia, and in ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... seven days' incubation inject that amount of the culture corresponding to 1 per cent. of the body-weight of a healthy frog, into the reptile's dorsal ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... hard words, wherefore he had heard nothing. Hereupon I, as Dom. Consul afterwards told the pastor of Benz, clenched my fists and answered, "What, thou arch rogue, didst thou not crawl about the room in the shape of a reptile?" whereupon he would hearken to me no longer, thinking me distraught, nor would he make the constable take an oath, but left me standing in the midst of the room, and got ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... him Simonides, with lighter Air, In Beasts, and Apes, and Vermin, paints the Fair: The good Scriblerus in like forms displays The reptile Rhimesters ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... Like some vile reptile it had found within him some cave from which it might emerge to brandish its hideous envenomed horned head, and into ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... and about the size of a large lentil. When the head is ripe, it will, when shaken, give the same sound as the tail of a rattle-snake, which seems to indicate the property of the plant; for it is the specific remedy against the bite of that dangerous reptile. The person who has been bit ought immediately to take a root, bite off part of it, chew it for some time, and apply it to the wound. In five or six hours it will extract the whole poison, and no bad consequences ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... had congregated. But the stove was only an excuse for our listless, gregarious gathering; warmth and idleness went well together, and it was currently accepted that we had caught from the particular reptile which gave its name to our camp much of its pathetic, lifelong search for warmth, and its habit of indolently ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... under this name for no other reason than because it was known in the vicinity as such, this designation having been adopted by Squier and Davis, as they frankly say, "for want of a better," adding "although the figure bears as close a resemblance to the lizard as any other reptile." ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... a Christian's! What does the reptile who painted this know of the mother, the Virgin, the stainless lily, the thornless rose, the path by which God came to men, the mother of sorrow, who bought the world with her tears, as Christ did with His sacred ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... upon my face, and entangling itself in the tresses of my wild and matted hair: Often have I at waking found my fingers ringed with the long worms which bred in the corrupted flesh of my Infant. At such times I shrieked with terror and disgust, and while I shook off the reptile, trembled with all a ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... rank disgraced, Who found their pride on titles which they stain, And, mean themselves, are of their fathers vain; Who would a bill of privilege prefer, And treat a poet like a creditor; 150 The generous ardour of the Muse condemn, And curse the storm they know must break on them! 'What! shall a reptile bard, a wretch unknown, Without one badge of merit but his own, Great nobles lash, and lords, like common men, Smart from the vengeance of a scribbler's pen?' What's in this name of lord, that I should fear To bring their vices to the public ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... in the Sudan employ serpents in killing buffaloes at the present day. They catch a puff-adder in a noose, and then nail it alive by the tip of its tail to the round in the middle of a buffalo track, so that when an animal passes the reptile may strike at it. Presently a buffalo comes along, does what it is expected to do, and then the puff-adder strikes at it, injects its poison, and the animal dies soon after. As many as ten buffaloes have been killed in a day by one puff-adder. The body of ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... a poisonous serpent and fastened it above his head, so that the venom of the reptile falling, drop by drop, upon his face, would cause the most terrible pain. But Sigyn, Loki's loyal wife, the only person in heaven or earth who cared what became of him, took a cup and held it up to catch the burning drops as they fell, and she only left his ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... (the only dog on the inside of her game) could see her canvas flicker a moment,—but only just a moment,—then it would belly out taut and full, and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, "It's synonymous with supererogation," or some godless long reptile of a word like that, and go placidly about and skim away on the next tack, perfectly comfortable, you know, and leave that stranger looking profane and embarrassed, and the initiated slatting the floor with ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... lived a beautiful purple life, went to sleep under a tree in the forest. Jove sent a huge serpent to destroy him. The man awakened as the reptile drew near. ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... its habitation. She collected her courage, and having clapped her hands and waved the lantern about to scare any alligators that might still be lurking there, hearing and seeing nothing more, she descended to where she had trodden upon the reptile. Evidently this was its bed, for its long body had left an impress upon the mud, and all about lay the remains of creatures that it had brought in for food. Moreover, a path ran outwards, its well-worn trail ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... she baked it in a pan, O! But between whiles she was down with me weeding sensitive in the paddock. The men have but now passed over it; I was round in that very place to see the weeding was done thoroughly, and already the reptile springs behind our heels. Tuitui is a truly strange beast, and gives food for thought. I am nearly sure - I cannot yet be quite, I mean to experiment, when I am less on the hot chase of the beast - that, even at the instant ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... before his officious companions, his complexion rapidly changing into various shades, like that of one who forces himself to approach and touch some animal or reptile for which he entertains that deep disgust and abhorrence which was anciently ascribed to constitutional antipathy. This appearance of constraint put upon himself, with the changes which it produced on his face, was calculated to prejudice him somewhat in the opinion of the spectators, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... The reptile was of a species with which Brayton was unfamiliar. Its length he could only conjecture; the body at the largest visible part seemed about as thick as his forearm. In what way was it dangerous, if in any way? Was it venomous? Was it a constrictor? His knowledge ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... snake had wound its coils round Ned's body. Its head towered above his, while its eyes flashed menacingly, and its tongue vibrated with a hissing sound as it gazed at Tom. Its tail was wound round the trunk of the tree. Ned was powerless, for his arms were pinioned to his side by the coils of the reptile. ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... their pressure and opened out, allowing the professor to struggle free of their encircling folds, the huge body writhed convulsively, the great tail threshing down the grass during the space of a full minute or more; then the writhings gradually subsided, and finally the great reptile lay stretched almost at full length before them, dead, with a bullet from Mildmay's ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... plastic superiority, rather inclines that way. The Apollo has been loudly extolled for the pride of its attitude and its divine calm in the encounter with the serpent Python; and still it is said that "a god could not have cause for so great pride in the conquest of a reptile." But the art-critics have exaggerated the import of the figure, which is wonderfully beautiful without being accurately expressive. The civilization of the new era has developed in man moral and physical qualities, which furnish new expressions ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... our history as impertinent and foreign to our main design, because thou dost not immediately conceive in what manner such incident may conduce to that design. This work may, indeed, be considered as a great creation of our own; and for a little reptile of a critic to presume to find fault with any of its parts, without knowing the manner in which the whole is connected, and before he comes to the final catastrophe, is a most presumptuous absurdity. The allusion and metaphor we have here made use of, we must acknowledge to be ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... requires another to complement it; namely, that those men and women, who do not even approximately fulfil the conditions of their elevated rank, who will not endeavour after the great human-divine idea, striving to ascend, are sent away back down to that stage of development, say of fish or insect or reptile, beyond which their moral nature has refused to advance. Who has not seen or known men who appeared not to have passed, or indeed in some things to have approached the development of the more human of the ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... performing my ablutions with a large sponge, a centipede, four and a half inches long, crawled out of one of the orifices, and, ran over my hand. The venomous reptile was killed, without any harm being done. It had probably been hidden in one of a number of large land-shells, which I brought on board a day or two ago. His touch upon my hand was the most disagreeable sensation that I ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... where the copperhead and rattler are known to have survived among the fittest. Seeing a snake hole and desiring information as to the family record of the proprietor, he inserted a finger, and while waiting for results explained that there is no better way to secure a specimen, as the enraged reptile will fasten its fangs into the intruding member and then can be easily withdrawn. It is a pleasure to state that even snakes recognize the claims of friendship, ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... heard her coming and had doubled back with the lightning speed of which it was capable. But, so fixed was its attention upon the still sleeping cub that it had heard nothing until the growl apprised it of the presence of danger; and then it was too late. The great paw fell upon the back of the reptile with a crash, shattering the bones and crushing the flesh into a pulp. Out of the cavity darted the arrow-shaped head, hissing and lunging frantically and blindly in all directions, while the latter half of the body writhed impotently and twisted itself into knots; but the snake could ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... acknowledges in them his indebtedness to Michael Angelo without being in the least imitative. These four figures are allegorically full of meaning, and taken simply as sculpture, they are excellently modeled. His "Fire," showing a Greek warrior defending himself from the fiery breath of a vicious reptile, is novel in its motive, while "Water" discloses Father Neptune bellowing out into the briny air, accompanied by dolphins in rhythmic motions. "Air," on the south, discloses Aitken as the skillful modeler of less muscular forms of a winged female figure, which in itself, without ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... Greek philosopher, Empedocles, who 560 B.C. adumbrated the "survival of the fittest" theory of Darwin, they are the result of ceaseless trials of nature. While the Sequoia was first emerging from the Carboniferous, or Coal Period, the reptile-like ancestors of these mammals, covered with scales and of egg-laying habits, were crawling about and giving not the most remote prophecy of their potential transformation through 10,000,000 of years into the superb ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... creeping! Are the Reptile things not alive then? You think Pindar wrote that carelessly? or that, if he had only known a little modern anatomy, instead of 'reptile' things, he would have said 'monochondylous' things? Be patient, and let us attend to the ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... made use of the test for lizards and hedge-hogs—to wit, the application of madder dye to the Adam's apple, turning it lemon yellow if any sort of reptile is within, and violet if there is a mammal—but it failed to operate as the books describe. Being thus led to suspect a misplaced and wild-growing bone, perhaps from the vertebral column, the doctor decided to have recourse ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... reptile was a fool. Had it voluntarily freed itself, or allowed the bull to get clear of the enveloping mushy earth, it could have whirled its entire length around the quadruped and mashed it to pulp. But the Atlamalcan tugboat, if tied by a ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the one God. Unacquainted with the moral perfections of Jehovah, they saw this immense population prostrate before dead matter, before the monkey, the serpent, before idols the very personifications of sin; and they found this animal, this reptile, and the lecher Krishnu {u-caron} and his concubine Radha, among the favourite deities ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... in the side of the cage and thrust the poor beast in. I am not ashamed to say that I turned my head away. It was only a dog, but it might have been a human being, so far as the reptile, or the half-savage man at ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... reluctant to do his duty. He did not explain that he was acting for the real good of the prisoner, or apologise for being himself an erring mortal. He showed rather the stern satisfaction of a man suppressing a noxious human reptile. Thus, though he carefully avoided anything savouring of the theatrical, the downright simplicity with which he delivered sentence showed the strength of his feeling. He never preached to the convicts, but spoke in plain words of their atrocities. The ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... that was found among them, and he put on the Helmet of Dread, which had once been the terror of the mid-world, and the like of which no man had ever seen; and then he gazed with greedy eyes upon the fateful ring, until he, too, was changed into a cold and slimy reptile,—a monster dragon. He coiled himself about the hoard; and, with his restless eyes forever open, he gloated day after day upon his loved gold, and watched with ceaseless care that no one should come near to despoil him of it. This was ages and ages ago; and still he wallows ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... live a long while without food. There is no obvious reason why some animals excrete urea and others uric acid. As uric acid is a satisfactory and unirritating form in which waste nitrogen is expelled from the body of the active alert bird, as well as from the slow moving reptile, it is surprising if a very much smaller quantity acts as a poison in man. Many physicians are convinced that uric acid is absolutely unirritating. Uratic deposits may occur to an enormous extent in gouty persons without the occurrence of any pain or paroxysms. Urates ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... that originates all improvements in type and the potentialities latent in every form of being. In order to work out in detail the improvements in the animal forms, the help and co-operation of man were required. The amphibian and reptile forms which then abounded had about run their course, and were ready to assume the more advanced type of bird or mammal. These forms constituted the inchoate material placed at man's disposal, and the clay was ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... spring comes on, and the warm sun bursts forth, a formidable snake-like creature, nearly three feet in length, is often seen frequenting the plantations of the sweet potato, or coiled up beneath the roots of an old tree; its keen eye watching for any small reptile or insect which may be passing. The head is small in proportion to the body, and of a pyramidal form—mottled at the sides with black and green, the jaws edged with yellow. Its abdomen is bright yellow; and the upper part of the ear is marked with numerous lines ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... lay down to sleep, but were soon awakened by the hissing of an enormous serpent. One of my comrades was instantly devoured by this terrific creature. I climbed up a tree as fast as I could, and reached the topmost branches; my remaining companion was following me, but the dreadful reptile entwined itself round the tree and caught him. The serpent then went down and glided away. I waited until late the next day before I ventured to descend. Evening again approached, and I gathered together a great quantity of small wood, brambles, and ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... glove; to-morrow I will hang it, and before Heaven, if I had them, I would hang them all." "My lord," said she, "this is marvellous; but yet it would be unseemly for a man of dignity like thee to be hanging such a reptile as this. And if thou doest right, thou wilt not meddle with the creature, but wilt let it go." "Woe betide me," said he, "if I would not hang them all could I catch them, and such as I have I will hang." "Verily, ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... cried Tom, and Garrison, who had his shoes on, did so. Then Tom caught the reptile by the tail and flung it ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... sprang at Odin. My first stroke sunk up to the hilt in his hollow belly; my next cut the sceptre from his hand; my third—a great one—hewed the head from off him. It came rattling down, and out of it crawled a viper, which reared itself up and hissed. I set my heel upon the reptile's head and crushed it, and slowly ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail That crawls at evening in the public path; But he that has humanity, forewarned, Will tread aside, and let the reptile live. The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight, And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes A visitor unwelcome into scenes Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove, The chamber, or refectory, may die. A necessary act incurs no blame. The ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... there are no creatures anything like it in nature, and because it had appeared to me for a purpose, and bore some mysterious signification. I looked at the beast well; it was brown in colour and had a shell; it was a crawling kind of reptile, about eight inches long, and narrowed down from the head, which was about a couple of fingers in width, to the end of the tail, which came to a fine point. Out of its trunk, about a couple of inches ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... rejoices, because she sees in him a possible Agassiz. When he displays an interest in plant life, she sees in him another Burbank. When she finds him drawing pictures at his desk, she smiles approval, for she sees in him another Raphael. She does not disdain the lowliest insect, reptile, or plant when she finds it within the circle of the child's interests. She is willing, nay eager, to ransack the universe if only she may come upon elements of nutrition for her pupils. From every flower ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... we had a famous embroglio between our chaouch and the marabout. The latter had caught a waran, or large species of lizard, and skinned it to dispose of the skin. The chaouch impudently swore he had been eating the flesh of the reptile—a direful accusation. A tremendous war of words ensued; and not of words only, for presently the holy man came in for a gratification of ropes' end. All the Fezzanees rushed forward to save the honour of the marabout; ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... like lightning. Villa—the magic word! The Great Man, the salient profile, the unconquerable warrior who, even at a distance, exerts the fascination of a reptile, ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... dragon of the sea, saith ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale. Let not the modern paintings ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... suggests a bird when it does not suggest an insect or a winged reptile; and this monoplane particularly suggested the bird type. The simile which occurred to me was that of the bird which guards the African rhinoceros; after that it was doubly easy to conceive of this army as a rhinoceros, having all the brute strength and brute force which are a part of that ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... I read the story: a duel of teeth between this captive reptile and the semi-crucified man; the one in anger wounding, the other snapping in his frenzy to sever that venomous head—his only means of escape from it. From the way the thongs had cut into his wrists ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... shop windows, from which not only familiar faces, but even the window sashes themselves, were gone. The great unfinished serpent-like flume, crossing the river on gigantic trestles, had advanced as far as the town, stooping over it like some enormous reptile that had sucked its life blood and was ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... begged for the flesh in order to dry it and use it as a specific against asthma, as they believed that any asthmatic person who lived on the flesh for a certain time would be infallibly cured. Another native wished the fat as an antidote for rheumatic pain. The head of this huge reptile was presented to an American, who in turn presented it to the Boston Museum. Unfortunately La Gironiere's picturesque descriptions must often be taken with a grain of salt. For some information regarding the reptiles of the islands ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... mighty wrongs to petty perfidy Have I not seen what human things could do? From the loud roar of foaming calumny To the small whisper of the as paltry few And subtler venom of the reptile crew, The Janus glance of whose significant eye, Learning to lie with silence, would SEEM true, And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh, Deal round to ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... Nights, as a specimen of the true Persian romance, "The Queen of the Serpents" (vol. v. 298), the subject of Lane's Carlylean denunciation. The first gorgeous picture is the Session of the Snakes which, like their Indian congeners the Naga kings and queens, have human heads and reptile bodies, an Egyptian myth that engendered the "old serpent" of Genesis. The Sultanah welcomes Hasib Karim al-Din, the hapless lad who had been left in a cavern to die by the greedy woodcutters; and, in order to tell him her tale, introduces the "Adventures of Bulukiya": the latter is an ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... generous nature. My mother died whilst I was yet a boy. I have two brothers: Arthur, my elder, with a soul like to his father's; and Hugh, younger than I, a mean spirit, covetous, treacherous, vicious, underhanded—a reptile. Such was he from the cradle; such was he ten years past, when I last saw him—a ripe rascal at nineteen, I being twenty then, and Arthur twenty-two. There is none other of us but the Lady Edith, my cousin—she ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... most prolific writer of the evangelical reform in the eighteenth century and the standard theologian of the evangelical party, declared: "We have no reason at all to believe that the animal had a serpentine form in any mode or degree until its transformation; that he was then degraded to a reptile to go upon his belly imports, on the contrary, an entire loss and alteration of the original form." Here, again, was a ripe result of the theologic method diligently pursued by the strongest thinkers in the Church during ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... well enough, remembering how the brilliant Chinese doctor once had performed such an operation as this upon poor Inspector Weymouth; how, by means of an injection of some serum prepared (as Karamaneh afterwards told us) from the venom of a swamp adder or similar reptile, he had induced amnesia, or complete loss of memory. I felt every drop of blood ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... except for the occasional rush of some great iguana or other reptile, and the sound of the wings of the flocks of wildfowl passing over us from time to time, the march was deathly silent. But at night it was different, for then the bull-frogs boomed incessantly, as did the bitterns, while great swamp owls and other ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... Your brother is acquainted with the Wasungu (white men), and knows that what they promise they make good. Get me a hundred and forty pagazis and I will pay you your price." With unctuous courtesy, the reptile I was now warmly nourishing; said, "I do not want anything from you, my friend, for such a slight service, rest content and quiet; you shall not stop here fifteen days. To-morrow morning I will come and overhaul your bales to see what ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... darted into his mind, that tho' the anguish had the sensation of glowing heat—it might, notwithstanding that, be a bite as well as a burn; and if so, that possibly a Newt or an Asker, or some such detested reptile, had crept up, and was fastening his teeth—the horrid idea of which, with a fresh glow of pain arising that instant from the chesnut, seized Phutatorius with a sudden panick, and in the first terrifying disorder of the passion, it threw him, as it has done the best generals upon earth, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... the folly to believe you are acquainted with the past, the present, and the future. I am an intelligence somewhat superior to you, though there are millions of beings as much above me in power and in intellect as man is above the meanest and weakest reptile that crawls beneath his feet; yet something I can teach you: yield your mind wholly to the influence which I shall exert upon it, and you shall be undeceived in your views of the history of the world, and ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... be a new sort of a Gentile. Never came across a reptile of your pattern before. Is that ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... Chipmunk teaching its little ones to play tag. They looked so bright and happy, he longed, not to join them because he could only crawl, but to have the happiness of looking on. But when he came slowly forward, and the old Chipmunk saw him waving his horns and looking like a green poisonous reptile, she screamed, "Run, my children!" and all darted into their hole while Mother Chipmunk stuffed up the doorway ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... did not strike that reptile? he tried to strike me," Angelot reflected as he walked down the quiet lane. "Well! the Prefect and my father would have been vexed, and he had his little punishment. Some day we shall meet independently, and then we shall see, Monsieur Ratoneau, we shall see! But ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... Chancellor, he did get up and say so. The next day Brougham introduced the subject in the House of Lords, and attacked Sugden with all the sarcasm and contumely which he could heap upon him, comparing him to 'a crawling reptile,' &c. Not one of his Tory friends said a word, and, what is curious, the Duke of Wellington praised Brougham for his disinterestedness, and old Eldon defended the place. The following day (Friday) Sugden again brought the matter before the House of Commons, complained bitterly ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... thus indicates the belief that not only do crocodiles shed tears, but that sympathizing passengers, turning to commiserate the reptile's woes, are seized and destroyed by the treacherous creatures. That quaint and credulous old author—the earliest writer of English prose—Sir John Mandeville, in his "Voiage," or account of his "Travile," published about 1356—in which, by the way, there are to be ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... is now in the Berlin Museum. It represents one of the sacred crocodiles mentioned by Strabo; we read on the base a Greek inscription in honour of Ptolemy Neos Dionysos, in which the name of the divine reptile "Petesukhos, the great ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... bought ermine, venal Honour's veil, When set by bankrupt Majesty to sale Or drew Nobility's coarse ductile thread >From some distinguished harlot's titled bed. Not thus ennobled Samuel!-no worth from his mud the sluggish reptile forth; No parts to flatter, and no grace to please, With scarce an insect's impotence to tease, He struts a Peer-though proved too dull to stay, Whence (885) even poor Gybbons is ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... much of the reptile world, both by land and water. Basking upon the bank, or floating along the stream, we may behold the great water lizards—the crocodile and caiman; or the unwieldly forms of the cheloniae—the turtles. Nimbly running along the tree-trunk, or up the slanting ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the puff adder or sand viper as to the rattlesnake or copperhead. This is a suggestive bit of superstition, since there's no such thing as an adder or viper on the Western hemisphere and never has been one, unless it came, carefully pickled, in a jar. What passes for the supposedly deadly reptile is the common hog-nosed or bull snake. It is about as dangerous as an infuriated rabbit. But it puts up one of the best "bluffs" known to natural history. When caught at its favorite occupation of basking in the open, without convenient avenue of escape, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... table, and the young men stood gazing as if it were a venomous reptile which each hesitated ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but where he was. It seemed an age that I thus lay, not daring even to draw a breath. I felt at last that I must give up the contest. I prayed for mercy. The oppression on my chest became almost insupportable. Still I dared not move. The deadly reptile stretched out its head—slowly it began to uncoil itself—the dread sound of its rattle struck my ear. I felt that now I must muster all my nerve and resolution, or be lost; the huge reptile stretched itself out and slowly crawled on—oh, horror!—it ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... (House). The cross on the Palenque Tablet has so many features in common with those in the blue and red loops of the Fejervary Codex as to induce the belief that they were derived from the same type. We see in that of the Tablet the reptile head as at the base of the cross in the blue loop, the nodes, and probably the bird of that in the red loop, ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas
... ancestral spirits—taking up an abode in the bodies of beasts, birds, or reptiles, or even in plants or stones, caused them to view with respect of a superstitious kind many natural objects. Some one thing—a beast, bird, reptile, fish, plant, or strange stone had been fixed on as the abode of his tutelary spirit by some father of a family. The family grew into a clan, and the clan to a tribe, and the object sacred in the eyes of its father and founder became its "totem", crest, or symbol. As a rule, whatever thing ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... rattlesnake was in the bushes, and Fred had descended almost upon it. But for the tremendous effort of Jack he would have dropped squarely upon the velvety body, with consequences too frightful to be thought of; but his great leap carried him over it, while the attack of Fred upon the reptile, in the effort to save his companion, diverted the attention of the ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... our ancestors, from their dread of the serpent on account of its poisonous sting, as well as from their antipathy to it as the symbol of evil, should ascertain those plants which seemed either attractive, or antagonistic, to this much-dreaded reptile. Accordingly certain plants, from being supposed to be distasteful to serpents, were much used as amulets to drive them away. Foremost among these may be mentioned the ash, to escape contact with which a serpent, it has ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... measure. When the newspaper is brought in, I walk round and round it as a dog will do round the spot he is about to lie down upon. I would fain not touch it; but at last, like a fascinated bird who falls per force into the reptile's mouth, so do I plunge into its columns, read it with desperation, and when the poison has circulated, throw it away in despair. If I am reminded to say grace at dinner, I commence "My Lords, and gentlemen;" and when I seek my bed, as I light my taper, I move "that the House do now adjourn." ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... before now, how that insect Wencestao Retana was rewarded with a cooked up deputyship to the Cortes, that salaried reptile of the Philippine convents, who, with the aid of that tyrant General Weyler, his worthy godfather, the despotic incendiary of the town of Calamba, of ominous memory amongst us, does nothing but vomit rabid foam, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... not only drank of the springs beloved of King Bladud, of apocryphal memory, but even went so far as to imbibe the snail-water, which was then the last species of quack cure in vogue. This, probably, despatched him. But it is only just to that disagreeable little reptile that infests our gardens, and whose slime was supposed to possess peculiarly strengthening properties, to state that his death was materially hastened by being overturned when driving in his chariot. He was close upon ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... assertions will need to be proved only by a bare perusal of this hateful bill, by which the meanest, the most worthless reptile, exalted to a petty office by serving a wretch only superiour to him in fortune, is enabled to flush his authority by tyrannising over those who every hour deserve the publick acknowledgments of the community; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... glad he is of the chance to help her up and soothe her fears no one but himself ever knows. She, too, has been picking berries, and has come suddenly upon a monster snake just gliding from a cedar bough almost over her head. When her fright subsides he at once hunts for and kills that reptile with far more satisfaction than he ever felt in killing one before. It is an ungrateful return, for although the boy knew it not, the snake has done him a greater kindness than he ever realized. Then when all danger is removed, how sweet ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... Lear, which are thoroughly contemptible, and which we follow with contempt. But it is to be observed that there is nothing laughable in Oswald; nothing that we can either laugh with or laugh at: he is a sort of human reptile, such as life sometimes produces, whom we regard with moral loathing and disgust, but in whose company neither mirth nor pity can find any foothold. On the other hand, the feelings moved by a Bottom, a Dogberry, an Aguecheek, or a Slender, are indeed very different ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... until he discovered a mode (slightly immoral, perhaps, though some think not) of murdering the old fraudulent jockey, and so circuitously of unhorsing him.] changed the relations between the animals. The mode of escaping from the reptile he showed to be not by running away, but by leaping on its back booted and spurred. The two animals had misunderstood each other. The use of the crocodile has now been cleared up—viz., to be ridden; and the final cause of man is that he may improve the health ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... descent-system into agreement with the actual facts, the incongruity between the two has become obvious." Thus, for instance, the well-known archaeopteryx is not, as was maintained, a connecting link between reptile and bird, but a member of a blindly ending side branch. In fact palaeontological research has proven incapable of finding the transitions between different species, clearly determined by the theory. But the overwhelming abundance of matter called ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... (or the Restoration notables) are described, with huge scorn, as ranged along the tiers of their theatre, like barnyard fowl blinking on their perch, watching, not without a flutter of apprehension, the vain attempts made on their safety by the reptile grovelling ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... gloom in the frog world, every reptile winced and squirmed, when he heard of this new enemy. All crawlers, creepers, and jumpers had so long imagined that the land was theirs and had been made solely for their benefit! Nor did they know how to conquer the storks. The frog daddies could do nothing, and the frog mothers ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... argument! We have seen many a steam roller go over Truth, and Right, and Justice, by main strength and red-hot power; but Truth and Right refuse to stay flat down. There is on this earth not one wild-animal species—mammal, bird or reptile—that can long withstand exploitation for commercial purposes. Even the whales of the deep sea, the walrus of the arctic regions, the condors of the Andes and alligators of the Everglade morasses are no exception to ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... the various nations are divided. They are not the personal emblems of the chiefs, although in signing treaties they employ them as their sign manual. Each tribe or clan had its emblem, consisting of the figure of some bird, beast, or reptile, and is distinguished by the name of the animal which it has assumed as a device, as Wolf, Hawk, Tortoise. To different totems, says Parkman in his "Conspiracy of Pontiac," attach different degrees of rank and dignity; ...
— The Abenaki Indians - Their Treaties of 1713 & 1717, and a Vocabulary • Frederic Kidder
... cliffs, he wades through bog and marsh and mud and tracks us to our feeding grounds to surprise us with the deadly shot, and kills the mother hovering over the nest of her helpless offspring with as little compunction as if she were a poisonous reptile instead of a melodious joy-giver. And all this horrible slaughter ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... her, and was at her side in a moment, and with a heavy club killed the terrible reptile on the spot. He then proceeded to bind the limb to prevent a free circulation of the blood, which in a few minutes would have conveyed the poison to the heart, and proved fatal. In the meantime, the chief ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... and the woman in the dim background ceased her weird rubbing of the drum. Haddo seized the snake and opened its mouth. Immediately it fastened on his hand, and the reptile teeth went deep into his flesh. Arthur watched him for signs of pain, but he did not wince. The writhing snake dangled from his hand. He repeated a sentence in Arabic, and, with the peculiar suddenness ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... "Mean ole reptile!" said Florence, alluding to Mrs. Silver; then she added serenely, "Well, grandpa don't get home till five o'clock, and it's only about a quarter of two now. Aunt Julia, what are ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... little Lady Selina Jemima Townsend as she appeared when afraid. Afraid—of what? Why, a poor tiny reptile, a harmless frog, that had jumped into her hat full of daisies, with a croak, as much as to say—"How do you do? Good morning, Lady Townsend; I am glad to see you down in the country." But what do you think she did? Why, the little ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... more holy alchemy enjoin'd, Call'd for by that disgust the heart conceives At the usurping empire of pretence; At all those useless and disgraceful chains, Which tie us down, and imp with aptest wings, Falsehood and selfishness, who ought to creep In their own reptile slime, and dart away When eyes perceiv'd their presence. Oh! could those Adventure in too perilous a path, If without other guide than the bright stars, The love of what is lofty and divine, Or the desire ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... revealed in all their damning profusion. The Doctor stepped back dramatically. "Hardbake!" he gasped; "wine, pots of strawberry jam! Oh, Bultitude, this is a revelation indeed! So I have nourished one more viper in my bosom, have I? A crawling reptile which curries favour by denouncing the very crime it conceals in its playbox! Bultitude, I was not prepared for such duplicity ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... nor was any one allowed to interfere with their freedom, or to harm them when they grew insufferably offensive. The death of one of these crawling deities is considered a calamity in the household, and grief for the reptile becomes as great as for ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... houses with cane tables, etc. All the feet of the tables, sofas, etc., soon became instinct with life. The abominable head of the crocodile and his leering eyes looked out at me multiplied into a thousand repetitions, and I stood loathing and fascinated. And so often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same way: I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear every thing when I am sleeping), and instantly I awoke. It was broad noon, and my children were ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... all through!" grumbled the fat scout, looking carefully where he expected to plant his foot next; for, in spite of Rob's assurance, he was not quite so certain that the undergrowth beneath the bridge might not harbor some poisonous reptile which might strike unexpectedly. ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... (acr.). There is also a process overhanging the glenoid cavity (g.) wherein the humerus articulates, which process is called coracoid (co.); it is ossified from two separate centres, and represents a very considerable bone in the bird, reptile, and frog. Along the dorsal edge of the scapula of the rabbit is unossified cartilage, which is called the supra-scapula (s.sc.). In man there runs from the acromion to the manubrium of the sternum a bone, the collar-bone or clavicle. This ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells |
