"Zebra" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... being fine, we made excursions in the neighbourhood. At Sevres I saw two pieces of china; on one of them was a gnu, on the other a zebra. Somerville had told me that soon after his return from his African expedition, he had given the original drawings to M. Brongniart then director ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... Royal Society and President of the Anthropological Institute, and J. F. Campbell, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of England, found implements not only in alluvial deposits, associated with the bones of the zebra, hyena, and other animals which have since retreated farther south, but, at Djebel Assas, near Thebes, they found implements of chipped flint in the hard, stratified gravel, from six and a half to ten ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... of my three subjects is the Zebra Halictus (H. zebrus, WALCK.), which is beautifully belted around her long abdomen with alternate black and pale-russet scarves. Her slender shape, her size, which equals that of the Common Wasp, her simple and pretty dress, combine ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Mashonaland. I had no weapons wherewith to procure food, and I was obliged to live upon just what I could pick up, chiefly roots. But twice I was fortunate enough to come upon the partially devoured 'kill' of a lion—once it was a zebra, and the other time it was a giraffe—still comparatively fresh; and if it had not been for them I believe I should not have survived, for I was literally at the end of my tether when I came upon them. And I had no means of making a fire, you will understand. I struggled ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the cross beams which gave force for a shower. The towels and appointments were specklessly clean. When Birnier appeared he found zu Pfeiffer sprawled in the lounge. On a red lacquer tray upon a great war drum, covered with the striped skin of a zebra, was a crystal liqueur set and a large ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... tusks. Then we continued our journey, and at night encamped near a grove of palm-trees which Makarooroo had described to us, and where we were soon joined by him and Jack, who told us that he had got on well, during the day—that he had shot an antelope, and had seen a zebra and a rhinoceros, besides a variety of smaller game. He also told us that Okandaga was encamped in a place of safety a few miles to the right of our position, and that she had stood ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... and tubers which Akut unearthed. Beyond the plain and across a low bluff they came upon water—brackish, ill-smelling stuff in a shallow water hole, the sides and bottom of which were trampled by the feet of many beasts. A herd of zebra galloped away ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... results of their crossing. Taking most strictly analogous facts amongst the blessed pigeons for my guide, I believe I can plainly see the colouring and marks of the grandfather of the Ass, Horse, Quagga, Hemionus and Zebra, some millions of generations ago! Should not I [have] sneer[ed] at any one who made such a remark to me a few years ago; but my evidence seems to me so good that I shall publish my vision at the end of my little discussion ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... on westward through miles and miles of swamp intersected by streams flowing southward to the Zambesi basin. One day Livingstone's ox, Sindbad, threw him, and he had to struggle wearily forward on foot. His strength was failing. His meagre fare varied by boiled zebra and dried elephant, frequent wettings and constant fever, were reducing him to a mere skeleton. At last on 26th March he arrived at the edge of the high land over which he had so long been travelling. "It is so steep," he tells us, "that I was obliged to dismount, and I was so weak ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... Have they never seen a gentleman eat his dinner before? They would open those silly round eyes a bit wider if these bars were not between us. I wish they could have seen me that day we caught the zebra. It was grand that!' (Lick, lick.) 'I had hunted all one night without getting even the whisk of a tail; and also during the day in the glaring, hot African sun, when I wanted to go to sleep; and I was very hungry. We, I and my wife, lay down in the shade a little while ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... in lower animals. In England, some years ago, a cross was effected between a male zebra and several young mares. Not only the hybrid colts resulting from this union, but all the colts afterward foaled by the same mares, from other horses, were ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... shaved and painted to resemble a zebra," muttered John. "The fellow has no property as respectable as the basest ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... important character, but from occurring in several species of the same genus, partly under domestication and partly under nature. It is a case almost certainly of reversion. The ass sometimes has very distinct transverse bars on its legs, like those on the legs of a zebra. It has been asserted that these are plainest in the foal, and from inquiries which I have made, I believe this to be true. The stripe on the shoulder is sometimes double, and is very variable in length and outline. A white ass, but NOT an albino, has been described without ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... The English sloop Zebra was sent down into the Gulf of Paria to clear it of French privateers, manned by the defeated maroons and brigands of the French islands, who were paying respect to no flag, but pirating indiscriminately. Chacon confessed himself glad enough to have them exterminated. He himself could ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... rationed upon very tough old rhinoceros for several days past. It was a cloudy morning, and soon after starting, it came on to rain heavily. I, however, held on, skirting a fine, well-wooded range of mountains, and after riding several miles I shot a zebra. Having covered the carcass well over with branches to protect it from the vultures, I returned to camp, and, inspanning my wagons, took it up on the march. We continued trekking on until sundown, when we started an immense herd of buffaloes, into which I stalked, and shot ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... dappled,[128] in the same manner as is so conspicuous with grey horses. This fact does not throw any clear light on the colouring of the aboriginal horse, but is a case of analogous variation, for even asses are sometimes dappled, and I have seen, in the British Museum, a hybrid from the ass and zebra dappled on its hinder quarters. By the expression analogous variation (and it is one that I shall often have occasion to use) I mean a variation occurring in a species or variety which resembles a normal character in another and distinct species or variety. Analogous variations may ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... "It is full of mystery; its eyes are provided with a sort of burnished covering, to which the Orientals attribute the powers of fascination; it has a glossier and finer coat than our handsomest horses possess, striped with more or less tawny bands, very much like the zebra's hide. There is something pliant and silky about its hair, which is sleek to the touch. Its powers of sight vie in precision and accuracy with those of man; it is rather larger than our largest domestic donkeys, and is possessed of extraordinary ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... on the entrance stairway and two men entered carrying something between them. Sweat had streaked through the charcoal coating on their faces leaving striped zebra-like countenances. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... animals are given at the end of this book, the most interesting of all being an accurate picture of the zebra, here called the Fu-lu, which means "Deer of Happiness," but which is undoubtedly a rough attempt at fara, an old Arabic term for the wild ass. Now, the zebra being quite unknown in Asia, the puzzle is, ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... over the heads of those on the lower steps of the veranda, and there on the sidewalk stood the dejected Hannington holding the bridle of what might have been a huge zebra gone wild on the colour scheme, or an advertisement for a ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... of a lion's cub; but, to compensate that one reserve, plunged into a raging torrent and saved a drowning woman by her long hair, which he caught in his teeth; he rode a race on an ostrich against a friend on a zebra, which went faster, but threw his rider, and screamed with rage at not being able to eat him; he, Falcon, having declined to run unless his friend's zebra was muzzled. He fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and shot a wild elephant in the eye; and all this he enlivened with pictorial descriptions ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... dawn, we would wander over this open country, intersected with tracks of forest. The great charm was the uncertainty of the species of game we might discover. It might be a huge eland, or an agile pig, or a herd of beautiful zebra. Now and then a certain amount of stalking was required, and on one occasion a long ride round brought us to the edge of a wood, from whence we viewed at twenty yards a procession of wildebeeste—those animals of almost mythical appearance, with their heads like ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... philosopher. Here's a pretty little girl: money I suppose in sufficiency—everything satisfactory, except, I grant you, the campaigner. The lad might daub his canvases, christen a child a year, and be as happy as any young donkey that browses on this common of ours—but he must go and heehaw after a zebra forsooth! a lusus naturae is she! I never spoke to a woman of fashion, thank my stars—I don't know the nature of the beast; and since I went to our race-balls, as a boy, scarcely ever saw one; as I don't frequent operas and parties in London like you young flunkeys of the aristocracy. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Memory of Exterminated Birds Whooping Cranes in the Zoological Park California Condor Primated Grouse, or "Prairie Chicken" Sage Grouse Snowy Egrets in the McIlhenny Preserve Wood-Duck Gray Squirrel Skeleton of a Rhytina Burchell's Zebra Thylacine, or Tasmanian Wolf West Indian Seal California Elephant Seal The Regular Army of Destruction G.O. Shields Two Gunners of Kansas City Why the Sandhill Crane is Becoming Extinct A Market Gunner at Work on Marsh Island Ruffed Grouse A Lawful Bag of Ruffed Grouse Snow ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... along with some bulky object concealed in her pouch met a Zebra, and desirous of keeping his ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... some of the animals, like the zebra and the tiger, haven't got any poetry, because they are so difficult to rhyme to. The Lamb knows quite well ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... Henry Leek, each with a cup in hand, experienced a certain difficulty in maintaining the interview at the pitch set by Matthew and Henry. Mrs. Leek, their mother, frankly gave way to soft tears, while eating bread-and-butter, jam and zebra-like toast. John took everything that Alice offered to him in gloomy ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... of the house, would give him the command of the whole interior—for the former dwelling of the field-cornet comprised only a single apartment. During his residence there, there had been two, thanks to a partition of zebra-skins; but these had been removed, and all was now ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... Glatton, Isis, Agamemnon, Polyphemus, and Ardent, ships of the line; the Amazon, Desiree, Blanche, and Alcmene, frigates; the Dart, Arrow, Cruiser, and Harpy, sloops; the Zephyr, and Otter, fire-ships; the Discovery, Sulphur, Hecla, Explosion, Zebra, Terror, and Volcano, bombs; with eight gun-brigs]—which you did me the honour to place under my command, I beg leave to inform you that, having by the assistance of that able officer Captain Riou, and the unremitting exertions of Captain Brisbane and the masters of the Amazon and ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... later the door opened, and Isaac Feinsilver entered, immaculately clothed in a suit of zebra-like design. He proceeded to the bookkeeper's office and kissed the blushing bride; then he repaired ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... for she passed unscathed through as savage and lion-ridden an area as there is in all Africa—a natural hunting ground which the white man has not yet discovered, where deer and antelope and zebra, giraffe and elephant, buffalo, rhinoceros, and the other herbivorous animals of central Africa abound unmolested by none but their natural enemies, the great cats which, lured here by easy prey and immunity from the rifles of big-game ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... though born of domesticated mothers, seems to assert their descent from wild and free ancestors as they throw out their heels and toss up their heads with a shrill neigh, and fly against the wind with streaming manes and outstretched tails as the Kulan, the Tarpan, and the Zebra do in the wild desert or ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... a view of my back hair. The sort of costumes I want are the kind that are designed this afternoon for day after to-morrow. If it's checks, I'll take two to the piece; if it's stripes, I want to make a circus zebra look like a clipped mule. And I want a change for every day in ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... true horses and the asses, which latter also include the zebra and quagga. Apart from the decided external differences between the horse and ass, they have one marked divergence, viz. that the horse has corns or callosities on the inner side of both fore and hind ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... the "zebra" or "ladder-backed" Woodpeckers, having the back and wings closely barred with black and white, the same as the preceding; the forehead, nasal tufts and nape are golden yellow, and the male has a patch of red on the crown. This is a very common resident species in the Lower Rio Grande ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... the hippopotamus, "of a certain zebra who was not vicious at all; he merely kicked the breath out of everything that passed behind him, but did not induce things to ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... glowed a proud, fierce spirit that transformed them. His head was high but his eyes roved from right to left restlessly, never still save when they paused for a flickering instant to examine some gazelle, some distant herd of zebra or wildebeeste standing in the vista of the flat-topped trees. His nostrils slowly expanded and contracted with his breathing, as do those of a spirited horse. In contrast to the gait of the white man he stepped vigorously and proudly as though the long day had not touched his strength. He wore ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... not indeed as affecting any important character, but from occurring in several species of the same genus, partly under domestication and partly under nature. It is a case apparently of reversion. The ass not rarely has very distinct transverse bars on its legs, like those on the legs of the zebra: it has been asserted that these are plainest in the foal, and from inquiries which I have made, I believe this to be true. It has also been asserted that the stripe on each shoulder is sometimes double. The shoulder-stripe is certainly ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... those tropical plants for ever, if it had not been for the crowds of people, and for a little awe of Lord Marchmont, who had given her his arm, and who did not seem to know or care much even for the dove orchis or the zebra-striped pitcher-plant. She wished she could turn him into Edmund, and looked at every plant which she fancied a native of the Cape, almost as kindly as if it had been a primrose ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... unbroken, generally proves a match for an old bull buffalo, which in size and strength greatly surpasses the most powerful breed of English cattle: the lion also preys on all the larger varieties of the antelopes, and on both varieties of the gnoo. The zebra, which is met with in large herds throughout the interior, is also a favorite object ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... "There was a live lion stuffed with straw; a zebra that had fifty stripes from the tip of his nose to his tail, nary stripe alike; a laughing hyena of the desert, who could cry like a child when he was hungry, and who devoured the people who came to his assistance, thereby showing the total ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... flannel strips and fluttering plumes; his tail was even gaudier; around each eye was a great circle of white and another of black; his nose was crossbarred with black and red; his legs were painted in zebra stripes of yellow and black; the patches of white that were native to his coat were outlined with black and profusely decorated with red hands and horseshoes painted in vermilion; on his neck was a band of beadwork, carrying a little bundle of sacred ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... can change his color variously. Sometimes he is of a dull brown, again prettily mottled; then, with almost kaleidoscopic suddenness, he will assume a garb beautifully striped in black and white, rivalled by nothing but the coat of the zebra. The cuttle-fish is a sluggish creature, seeking out the darker corners of his grotto, and often lying motionless for long periods together. But not so the little squid. He does not thrive in captivity, and incessantly ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... Striped Iguanodon sounded softly in the darkness. The sentry, who was pacing to and fro before the camp-fire, halted, and peered into the night. As he peered, he uttered the plaintive note of a zebra calling to ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... want to see the animals. We were in a circus once, Sue and I were. Our dog was a blue striped tiger, and we had a green painted calf, for a zebra." ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... and eat out of his hand, and they allowed him to approach without making any difficulty, but once harnessed they reared and could with difficulty be held in. However, it was not long before they submitted to this new service, for the onager, being less refractory than the zebra, is frequently put in harness in the mountainous regions of Southern Africa, and it has even been acclimatized in Europe, under zones ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... your face? my, but you are ugly!" The skin on the blistered side has peeled off in little strips, leaving the new skin very white in between the parched brown of the old, so I expect I do resemble a zebra or an Indian with his war paint on. The post, which is only a camp as yet, is located at the upper end of a beautiful valley, and back of us is a canon and mountains are on both sides. Far down the valley is a large Indian village, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... of a bald-headed baboon? An' the half-breed crature—she might ha' come from Patagony. An' the ould man Mazarine— part rhinoceros and part Methody, he is. An' what do ye be thinkin' of him they call Giggles, that almost guv his life to save the ould behemoth! Doesn't he remind you of the zebra, where the wild Hottentots come from—smart and handsome, but that showy, all stripes and tail and fetlock! D'ye unnerstand what I mean, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stiffly, as we bow to a commanding officer who has insulted us and will hear of it. But for that, Con would have manoeuvred against his wife to send him downstairs at the lady's heels. The fellow was a perfect riddle, hard to read as the zebra lines on the skin of a wild jackass—if Providence intended any meaning when she traced them! and it's a moot point: as it is whether some of our poets have meaning and are not composers of zebra. 'No one knows but them above!' he said ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... assume this form, with other considerations, has done much to upset this theory. In the variegated leaved snowberry we have the center and border of the leaf green, separated the one from the other by an isolated white or yellow zone. In the zebra-leaved eulalia and the zebra-leaved juncus, from Japan, we have the variegation of the leaf transversely instead of longitudinally, so that according to the old theory we have the anomaly of a healthy portion of the leaf producing an unhealthy ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... taken a dead girl with wild huggings to my bosom; and I have touched the corrupted lip, and spat upon her face, and tossed her down, and crushed her teeth with my heel, and jumped and jumped upon her breast, like the snake-stamping zebra, mad, mad...! ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... into view, with an isolated tree here and there agreeably breaking the monotony of the scene. The Makata is a wilderness containing but one village of the Waseguhha throughout its broad expanse. Venison, consequently, abounds within the forest clumps, and the kudu, hartebeest, antelope, and zebra may be seen at early dawn emerging into the open savannahs to feed. At night, the cyn-hyaena prowls about with its hideous clamour seeking for sleeping prey, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... zebras had got busy. Something about the arrangement of the zebra's stripes must have offended the artistic sensibilities of the wild asses, for pretty soon there was a lively kicking-match going on round the deck—a zebra against a donkey, kicking out, stern to stern, like prize-fighters sparring. It was funny, the way they looked round at each other ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... in 1847 Punch proposed the use of umbrellas and house-fronts for advertising purposes, and the hint was promptly taken. In the previous year he foretold the use of the Thames Tunnel as a railway conduit; and his sketch of a zebra harnessed to a carriage in the streets of London was realised forty years later. The great "Missing Word Competition" of 1892 was forestalled by Punch by four-and-thirty years (p. 53, Vol. XXXV., August 7th, 1858). Leech's "Mistress of the Hounds," too—how ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... used for catching fish, he ran behind the young hunter and clapped it, extinguisher-like, over his head. The basket was immediately laid hold of by two or three others; by whom the giant was dragged to the earth and held there until they had bound him with thongs of zebra hide. ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... catalogue of calamities, I never dreamt that among other claims to distinction he might have been billed as The Fractured Man, principal attraction in a travelling show, eclipsing the One-Legged Camel, the Tinted Zebra, and the Weird-Eyed Wanton from the Crusty North, who can sing in five languages "It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary." Ignoring the monotony of experience suffered by the ribs, and noting the obtrusiveness of one collar-bone, we may, with slight variation from a formula in ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... possession of a person at Horncastle; and I have lately heard of a cross between black game and the capercailzie in Scotland. But the following somewhat analogous cases have created special interest. Professor Ewart, of Edinburgh, has bred a cross between a male Berchell’s zebra and a mare pony, of the Isle of Rum breed, half wild, lent for the experiment by Lord Arthur Cecil. The pony was jet black; the foal resulting, except over the hind quarters, had as many stripes as the zebra ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... In this total they did not include the many years they spent behind prison bars, performing, without pay, ambition crushing toil under the eyes of brutal guards, fed upon poor food, sleeping in unhealthy quarters, dressed in coarse, zebra-striped suits and ruled by a most cruel discipline, all of which they were unable to reduce to a dollar and ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... says I. "By the way you're gawpin' at it, though, it might be a young zebra or a baby hippopotamus. But it's ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... conditions now and then appear which are abnormal to man, but which are normal to some of the lower animals. This tendency is exhibited by all organisms. In an occasional horse the long-lost stripes of the zebra-like ancestor reappear. Now and then a blue pigeon, like the ancestral form, crops up in a pure breed of domesticated birds. Even in the details of anatomy some ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... stripes on his shoulder, and very often stripes on his legs. I, myself, saw a pony of this description a short time ago, in a baker's cart, near Rothesay, in Bute: it had the long stripe down the back, and stripes on the shoulders and legs, just like those of the Ass, the Quagga, and the Zebra. Now, if we interpret the theory of recurrence as applied to this case, might it not be said that here was a case of a variation exhibiting the characters and conditions of an animal occupying something ...
— The Conditions Of Existence As Affecting The Perpetuation Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... — N. variegation; colors, dichroism, trichroism; iridescence, play of colors, polychrome, maculation, spottiness, striae. spectrum, rainbow, iris, tulip, peacock, chameleon, butterfly, tortoise shell; mackerel, mackerel sky; zebra, leopard, cheetah, nacre, ocelot, ophite[obs3], mother-of-pearl, opal, marble. check, plaid, tartan, patchwork; marquetry-, parquetry; mosaic, tesserae[obs3], strigae[obs3]; chessboard, checkers, chequers; harlequin; Joseph's coat; tricolor. V. be variegated &c. adj.; variegate, stripe, streak, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... fulfils all these conditions is that of the series of extinct animals which culminates in the horses, by which term I mean to denote not merely the domestic animals with which we are all so well acquainted, but their allies, the ass, zebra, quagga, and the like. In short, I use "horses" as the equivalent of the technical name Equidae, which is applied to the whole group ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... nailed up the door. The African zebra is a good student compared to him. It is a maxim of Walpole and North that all ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... of Venice, Black-pearl of a bowl of Japan, Prismatic lustres of Phoenician glass, Fawn-tinged embroideries from looms of Bagdad, The green of ancient bronze, cinereous tinge Of iron gods,— These, and the saffron of old cerements, Violet wine, Zebra-striped onyx, Are to me like the narrow walls of ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke |
