"Beak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... went to crack a crib. I'm shot with a bullet. Hide me in that loose hay there; leave me the bottle, and let nobody come nigh me. The beak will be after me ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... incarnations of the spirits, is of wondrous form and mystic nature. The rare advent of this bird upon the earth is, like that of the kirin or unicorn, a presage of the advent of virtuous rulers and good government. It has the head of a pheasant, the beak of a swallow, the neck of a tortoise, and the features of the dragon and fish. Its colors and streaming feathers are gorgeous with iridian sheen, combining the splendors of the pheasant and the peacock. Its five colors symbolize the cardinal ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... tortoise stopped, whereupon they poked it from behind with their knives. It was a vicious-looking brute, and had a huge horny beak, with which it bit off young trees that stood in its way as though they had been blades of grass. They were passing through a valley about half a mile wide, bordered on each side by woods, when Bearwarden suddenly exclaimed, "Here we ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... took a few seeds and began to coax the bird, until it, in point of fact, performed various tricks, on the stage, clasping in its beak a ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a bird Slips lightly oceanward— Sail feathering smooth o'er the bay And beak that drinks the wild spray. In his eyes beams cheerily A light like the sun's on the sea, As he watches the waning strand, Where the foam, like a waving hand Of one who mutely would tell ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... set a negro servant to watch that it did not sink into his gullet, as he fell asleep, and with instructions to take the poultice off whenever the pain abated; and there he lay on his back, whistling through this artificial beak, like a ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... as he hunted the bee, The snake slipt under a spray; The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak, And stared, with his foot on the prey; And the nightingale thought, 'I have sung many songs, But never a one so gay; For he sings of what the world will be When the years have ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... country a common vehicle for the devil and witches to play their pranks in, I verily believed we were haunted; and, in a violent fright, shrank under the bedclothes. This terrible apparition leaped upon the bed, and after giving us several severe dabs with its beak through the blankets, hopped away, and vanished. Strap and I recommended ourselves to the protection of heaven with great devotion, and, when we no longer heard the noise, ventured to peep up and take breath. But we had not been ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... courtyard; at one end, near a chapel, the men were huddled together; one could see nothing but swollen, stupid faces, inflamed nostrils, and twisted mouths; old women as fat and clumsy as melancholy whales; little wizened, cadaverous hags with sunken mouths and noses like the beak of a bird of prey; shamefaced female mendicants, their wrinkled chins bristling with hair, their gaze half ironical and half shy; young women, thin and emaciated, slatternly and filthy; and all, young and old alike, clad in threadbare garments that ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... a very forlorn condition, being covered with egg behind, while the front of the skirt showed a number of dismal rents made by the beak and claws of the angry rooster. I did not think it would be improved by rolling on the grass, but I could not well do ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... storm-beaten tree, the king of birds struck it such a blow that, dazed and terrified, it dropped the fish, and barely succeeded in getting away. It was not the fishhawk the eagle was after, but fish; and as the active bird saw the fish drop from the beak of the fishhawk, it flew down after it and caught it in mid-air ere it reached the water. Then, in majestic circles, it slowly ascended to its eyrie. This sight under other circumstances would have been enjoyable; ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... in the winter of 1615, pursuing one day a remarkable bird "which was the size of a hen, had a beak like a parrot and was entirely yellow, except for a red head and blue wings, and which had the flight of the partridge"—a bird I cannot identify—lost his way in the woods. For two days he wandered in the wilderness, ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... a bindeah bush. But the Galah saw him. She never stopped the hideous noise she was making for a minute, but, still shrieking, followed Oolah. When she reached the bindeah bush she rushed at Oolah, seized him with her beak, rolled him on the bush until every bindeah had made a hole in his skin. Then she rubbed his skin with her own bleeding head. "Now then," she said, "you Oolah shall carry bindeahs on you always, and the stain of ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... of resemblance, the thing which is so used has others less noble. Our modern repugnance to the vulture as feeding on carcasses was probably not felt by the singer of this song. What he brings into view are the characteristics common to the eagle and the vulture; superb strength in beak and claw, keenness of vision almost incredible, magnificent sweep of pinion and power of rapid, unwearied flight. And these characteristics, we may say, have their analogues in the divine nature, and the emblem not unfitly shadows forth one ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hand there were some whose names had been obviously the result of a sense of propriety in some one. Among the men who were rabidly set on distinguishing themselves in one way or another was a Major Beak. Now, why was it that this Major's nose was an aquiline of the most outrageous dimensions? Surely no one would argue that the nose grew to accommodate the name. Is it not more probable—nay, certain— that the name grew to accommodate the nose? ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... (Asilus), with his nasal, twangy buzz! "Waiow! Wha-a-ar are ye?" he seems to say, and with a suggestive onslaught against the window-pane, which betokens his satisfied quest, is out again at the window with a bluebottle-fly in the clutch of his powerful legs, or perhaps impaled on his horny beak. ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... indeed she—or, at least, like her—her full face displayed, her bosom uncovered, with her hair hanging loose, and with a purse of red velvet in her hands, while behind her a peacock leaned his beak over her shoulder, covering the wall with his immense plumage in the ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... Bird, were rubbing hard at the palm of one hand. There being no trees close by, the men used the sole of a shoe, while Puffy raked away at one paw with the claws of the others, and the Bird pecked a foot with his beak. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... woodpecker, in the various myths of schamir, is the dark storm-cloud, so the rock-splitting worm or plant or pebble which the bird carries in its beak and lets fall to the ground is nothing more or less than the flash of lightning carried and dropped by the cloud. "If the cloud was supposed to be a great bird, the lightnings were regarded as writhing worms or serpents in its beak. These fiery serpents, elikiai ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... big queen bumble-bee on the ground, looking extremely conspicuous in its black and chestnut coat on the fresh green sward; and thinking it numbed by the cold I picked it up. It moved its legs feebly, but alas! its enemy had found and struck it down, and with its hard, sharp little beak had drilled a hole in one of the upper plates of its abdomen, and from that small opening had cunningly extracted all the meat. Though still alive it was empty as a blown eggshell. Poor queen and mother, you survived the winter in vain, and went abroad in vain in the bitter weather in quest of ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... hens finally awakened Demetrio. They kept silent for a moment; then Panchita, taking out of the bosom of her blouse a young pigeon which opened its beak ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... an assembly of strange things, Of horrors such as nightmare only brings. Asps, and spread eagles without beak or feet, Sirens and mermaids here and dragons meet, And antlered stags and fabled unicorn, And fearful things of monstrous fancy born. Upon the rigid form of morion's sheen Winged lions and the Cerberus are seen, And serpents winged ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... painted as they were in churches, and presenting Our Lord with flowers de luce. Above or on one side were the names Jhesus—Maria, and the background was strewn with the royal lilies in gold.[830] She also had a coat-of-arms painted: on an azure shield a silver dove, holding in its beak a scroll on which was written: "De par le Roi du Ciel."[831] This coat-of-arms she had painted on the reverse of the standard bearing on the front the picture of Our Lord. A servant of the Duke of Alencon, Perceval de Cagny, says that ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... The Samians branded the figure of an owl on the foreheads of their Athenian prisoners, to revenge themselves for the branding of their own prisoners by the Athenians with the figure of a samaina. This is a ship having a beak turned up like a swine's snout, but with a roomy hull, so as both to carry a large cargo and sail fast. This class of vessel is called samaina because it was first built at Samos by Polycrates, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... no one had been here? (Shakes his finger at her.) My little song-bird must never do that again. A song-bird must have a clean beak to chirp with—no false notes! (Puts his arm round her waist.) That is so, isn't it? Yes, I am sure it is. (Lets her go.) We will say no more about it. (Sits down by the stove.) How warm and snug it is here! (Turns ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... break in the strata, by another, perhaps twenty feet higher, the upper portion being curiously wrought by nature's chisel into the shape of a human countenance. The forehead is shelving, the eyebrows heavy and menacing; the nose large and hooked like the beak of a hawk; the upper lip short, the chin prominent and pointed, while a thick growth of ferns in the shelter of the crag forming the nose gives the impression of a small mustache and goatee. Above ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... out the two long arms of Sepia and of the calamaries, and their absence in the octopus; and he tells us, what was only confirmed of late, that with these two long arms the creature clings to the rock and sways about like a ship at anchor. He describes the great eyes, the two big teeth forming the beak; and he dissects the whole structure of the gut, with its long gullet, its round crop, its stomach and the little coiled coecal diverticulum: dissecting not only one but several species, and noting differences that were not observed again till Cuvier re-dissected them. He describes the funnel ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... a pillar of the garden-gate; I looked, hardly daring either to move or breathe; for I feared that if she saw or heard me, she would leave the window. After a lapse of some minutes, the canary touched the sugar with his beak. ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... and, looking up, saw the hawk in full swing, not many hundred yards distant, with the bird in its beak, fluttering ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... the sparrows then, and he craned his neck to see the nest. There was the little mother-bird sitting in the nest with her wings outstretched to protect the nestlings from the deadly fumes. Her beak was wide open ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... the enemy in general was to relax the prepared bent of their souls for battle, and to weaken their tactical arrangements. Presently, however, wheeling his regiments (which were marching in column) to the front, with the effect of strengthening the beak-like (13) attack which he proposed to lead himself, at the same instant he gave the order, "Shoulder arms, forward," and led the way, the ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... in Chinese tradition, the Fung Hwang, which some sinologues identify with the phoenix of the West.(2) According to a commentator on the 'Rh Ya, this "felicitous and perfect bird has a cock's head, a snake's neck, a swallow's beak, a tortoise's back, is of five different colours and more than ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... your pitch was short Or smile to see you in the sanded trench; But Golf (so I extenuate my sin) Brings all men level, like the greens they putt on; One common bunker makes the whole world kin, And Bar may scrap with Beak, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... windows were small, and I had slipped off my knapsack and dropped into a big comfortable chair before I noticed a clean-shaven man with a big hooked nose and gleaming eyes seated in the far corner. It was like the beak of a bird, that nose, and I was so fascinated by it that I didn't answer the landlord when he came in and said 'Good evening.' The man opposite said 'Good evening' too, so I suppose that it must have ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... wary, and constantly on the lookout for tricks. I am told that a live albatross standing on the deck of the ship is a very handsome bird. His back is white, his wings are brown, he has a fine head, carries himself with great dignity, and has a grand eye and countenance. The bird has a pink beak and pretty streaks of a rose color on the cheeks. After death these colors disappear, and are not to be seen in the stuffed specimens such as are found in museums. A good-sized albatross weighs about twenty pounds, though, as before stated, he looks ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... everywhere, and learning new phases of the "Christian Dispensation" at every turn in his road. Paris had held him fascinated for a long while, not only because he saw her doom written like that of Babylon in letters of fire, and Ruin, like a giant bird of prey hovering over her with beak and claw prepared to pick the very flesh from her bones,—but also because he had met Angela Sovrani, one of the most rarely- gifted types of womanhood he had ever seen. He recognised her genius at once, and marvelled at it. And still more did ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... more caught sight of Kanaris with his fat thighs and interminable moustache, and of Bobelina and the blackbird. For fully five minutes all present preserved a complete silence—the only sound audible being that of the blackbird's beak against the wooden floor of the cage as the creature fished for grains of corn. Meanwhile Chichikov again surveyed the room, and saw that everything in it was massive and clumsy in the highest degree; as also that everything was curiously ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... day, signifies the lustful man who seeks to lie hidden in his deeds of darkness. The cormorant, so constituted that it can stay a long time under water, denotes the glutton who plunges into the waters of pleasure. The ibis is an African bird with a long beak, and feeds on snakes; and perhaps it is the same as the stork: it signifies the envious man, who refreshes himself with the ills of others, as with snakes. The swan is bright in color, and by the aid of its long neck extracts its ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... of green (hoist side), white, and red; the coat of arms (an eagle perched on a cactus with a snake in its beak) is centered ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... that there was a horny beak, like a parrot's, in the mouth, and that on the under side of the head was a ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... black veil, surrounded her thin, wan face with its narrow, hooded border. A great number of deep, transverse wrinkles ploughed her brow, which resembled yellowish ivory in color and substance. Her keen and prominent nose was curved like the hooked beak of a bird of prey; her black eye was piercing and sagacious; her face was at once ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Master Roland—the major-domo's mouth was as crooked as a hawk's beak for the whole morning afterwards, and any other page in your room would have tasted the discipline of the porter's lodge for it. But my Lady's favour stood between your skin and many a jerking—Lord send you may be the better for her protection in ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... breast the varnished buds of Spring; When the loosed current, as its folds uncoil, Slides in the channels of the mellowed soil; When the young hyacinth returns to seek The air and sunshine with her emerald beak; When the light snowdrops, starting from their cells, Hang each pagoda with its silver bells; When the frail willow twines her trailing bow With pallid leaves that sweep the soil below; When the broad elm, sole empress of the plain, Whose circling shadow speaks a century's reign, Wreathes in ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... any seafowl we are acquainted with. I directed the bird to be killed for supper, and the blood to be given to three of the people who were the most distressed for want of food. The body, with the entrails, beak, and feet, I divided into 18 shares, and with an allowance of bread, which I made a merit of granting, we made a good supper, compared with our ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... a tremendous upheaval as followed. The man, believing that possibly the "devil-bird" had broken out of its cage and was about to carry him off in its gigantic beak, gave a shrill scream of terror, and bouncing up, broke the slender hold Frank had secured ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... they; but they, nevertheless, did not let her fly, but took her home with them, and every time she cried they gave her a tap on the beak. ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... had two eggs in it, quite white, and each about as large as a small sugarplum. 6. When you approach the spot where one of these birds has built its nest, it is necessary to be careful. The mother bird will dart at you and try to peck your eyes. Its sharp beak may hurt your eyes most severely, and even destroy the sight. 7. The poor little thing knows no other way of defending its young, and instinct teaches it that you might carry off its nest ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... reviewing as he sat there, but not in thought; his knowledge was too deep for words; he was simply feeling, as a child that looked as he looked would naturally be feeling, on that bench between his parents. He opened his little mouth at times, as a small bird will open its small beak, without apparent purpose; and ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... [172] with a black beak, the upper part slightly aquiline, four inches long and in the form of a lancet; namely, the lower part representing the handle and the upper the blade, which is thin, sharp on both sides, and shorter by a third than the other, which circumference ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... least more rare, is the account given by Andreas Baccius, of a man who was struck in the hand by a cock, with his beak, and who died on the third day thereafter, looking for all the world like a fighting-cock, to the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his possession a hen, which answered the purpose of a cat in destroying mice. She was constantly seen watching close to a corn rick, and the moment a mouse appeared, she seized it in her beak, and carried it to a meadow adjoining, where she would play with it like a young cat for some time, and then kill it. She has been known to catch four or five mice a day in ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... voice dropped almost to a whisper, and he told a tale of the sailing of an open galley to Furdurstrandi, of sunsets on the open sea, seen under the curve of the one sail evening after evening when the galley's beak was notched into the centre of the sinking disc, and "we sailed by that for we had no other guide," quoth Charlie. He spoke of a landing on an island and explorations in its woods, where the crew ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the teeth. Finally at the very bottom of the mammalian scale are two small forms living in the Australian faunal region. The duckbill or Ornithorhynchus is the better known animal, with its close fur, webbed feet, and flattened ducklike beak, while its only other near relative, the Echidna, is somewhat similar to the spiny hedgehog in external appearance. A unique peculiarity of these two forms is that they produce eggs much like those of reptiles ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... ate, this devilish Italian, like three, and I too, I was so hungry,—forgive me, sir,—I did my share. But by the time we reached the cheese, a fine, ripe Camembert, had our coffee, and one thimbleful of green Chartreuse, I was plein jusqu'au bec, gorged up to the beak." ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... nothing as yet of the child-like obedience paid to the King of Borva by his islanders, thought to himself, "Well, you are a very strong and self-willed old gentleman, but if I were you I should not meddle much with that tall keeper with the eagle beak and the gray eyes. I should not like to be a stag, and know that that fellow was watching me somewhere with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... wind made the pennons cut strange capers. The winged lion of Venice looked as if trying to fly away home; the Chinese dragon appeared to brandish his forked tail as he clawed at the Burmese peacock; the double-headed eagle of Russia pecked at the Turkey crescent with one beak, while the other seemed to be screaming to the English royal beast, "Come on and lend a paw." In the hurry of hoisting, the Siamese elephant got turned upside down, and now danced gayly on his head, with the stars and stripes waving proudly over him. A green flag with ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the nest, the beak performs the office of drilling in the leaves the necessary holes, and passing the fibres through them with the dexterity of a tailor. Even such parts in the rear as are not sufficiently firm ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... At the end of some of which, in time, there will be gathered together a knot of matter, which by little and little will take the form of a head and you will, ere long, begin to discern eyes and a beak in it. All this while the first red spot of blood grows bigger and solider, till at length it becomes {85} a fleshy substance, and, by its figure, may easily be discern'd to be the heart; which as yet hath no other inclosure but the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... variation in color probably depends somewhat on their age or food—the red ones are generally supposed to be the most mature. The head is furnished with a pair of pointed mandibles, between which is a pointed beak or sucker (Fig. 2). The legs are eight in number; the two front pairs project forward and the other two backward; they are covered with long stiff hairs; the extremities of the feet are provided with long bent hairs, which are each terminated by a knob. The legs and feet appear to be only used in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... being produced under nature without selection. It would take much to persuade me that a Pouter Pigeon, or a Carrier, etc., could have been produced by the mere laws of variation without long continued selection, though each little enlargement of crop and beak are due to variation. I demur greatly to his comparison of the products of sinking and rising islands (87/6. "I venture to anticipate that a study of the vegetation of the islands with reference to the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... which had preceded this summer had been too dry to bring any growth here, so that it had not even the remains of a previous season's vegetation, and offered no trace of cover. A long and most exhausting chase did enable Finn to pull down a solitary emu, and of this the pack left nothing but beak and feathers when they passed on, still hungry, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... to the practical, doubted whether so long and slender a bill could be turned to such a purpose. More recent observation has confirmed White's objection and has established the fact of the woodcock holding the young one between her thighs, the beak being apparently used to steady her burden. Whether the little ones are habitually carried about in this fashion, or merely on occasion of danger, is not known, and indeed the bird's preference for activity in the dusk has invested accurate observation of its habits with some ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... freckles; especially under the eyes, which were of a deep, tranquil blue-grey. She half sat, half lay on her left side; whilst before her, quite close, strutted up and down on the grass, a bird, with blue plumage, coral-red beak, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... All night the lion remained, roaring at intervals, and Bar Shalmon clung to one of the upper branches afraid to sleep lest he should fall off and be devoured. When morning broke, a new danger threatened him. A huge eagle flew round the tree and darted at him with its cruel beak. Then the great bird settled on the thickest branch, and Bar Shalmon moved stealthily forward with a knife which he drew from his belt. He crept behind the bird, but as he approached it spread its big wings, and Bar Shalmon, to prevent himself being swept from the tree, dropped the knife and ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... convent—to be bricked up alive, perhaps. And then I hears a scratch, scratch, scratching, and 'Drat the mice,' says I; but I didn't take any notice, and then there was a little tap, tapping, like a bird would make with its beak on the window-pane, and I went and opened it, thinking it was a bird that had lost its way and was coming foolish-like, as they will, to the light. So I drew the curtain and opened the ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... was the color of old, old ivory. Her nose was like a great strong beak, and on it the skin was stretched very tightly, so that her nose shone dully when the candle was lit. Her eyes were big and as black as pools of ink and as bright as the eyes of a bird. Her hair also was black, it was as smooth as the finest silk, and when unloosened ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... nearly as big a one as I'll play on anybody that tries to drive me away from here. . . . I drove a snake away yesterday," he added. And he looked very thoughtfully at Benny Badger, as if he were picking out a soft place in which to sink his cruel beak. ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... however, a magnificent bird, when seen with wings expanded, nearly eight feet from tip to tip—and a body three and a half feet in length—his snowy-white head and neck shining in the sun, and his large, hooked, yellow beak open as he espies, afar off, the fish-hawk emerging from the ocean with his struggling prey. Downward he pounces with rapid flight. The fish-hawk sees his enemy approaching, and attempts to escape; but, laden with the fish he has just captured, in spite of ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... he; "but I think it a pity to let sich a dirty varmint go clear off, to dodge about in the bushes, and mayhap treat us to a poisoned arrow, or a spear thrust on the sly. Howsomedever, it ain't no consarn wotever to Jo Bumpus. How's your beak, ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... there are good points," says Roth, "such as the blending of the two bell forms into the common handle, the happy tapering of the ornamentation into the Normian bird's beak; the increasing size of the side cups as they rise to correspond to the enlarged opening of the bell form; the truthfulness to nature in an essential like the bust of the Negro, all of which betoken a fair amount of artistic feeling. The craftsman who probably ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... caves of Kentucky, and which, though they have lost their eyes, have not lost the foot-stalks which carried their eyes. In describing the varieties which have been produced by pigeon-fanciers, Mr. Darwin notes the fact that along with changes in length of beak produced by selection, there have not gone proportionate changes in length of tongue. Take again the case of teeth and jaws. In mankind these have not varied together. During civilization the jaws have decreased, but the teeth have not decreased ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... about this time that a caricature was circulated in Rome, representing Sixtus as King Stork and the Romans as frogs vainly attempting to escape from his devouring beak. Merito haec patimur, "We suffer deservedly," was the legend of the picture, and the moral it conveyed was a true one. Rome was in such a state as to require the harshest applications, and the despotic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Major Rennie of the Indian army. In this small flat we shot a new macaw, which I shall carry with me, and preserve the skin, if we get to water to-night. The front part of the neck and underneath the wings is of a beautiful crimson hue, the back is of a light lead colour, the tail square, the beak smaller than a cockatoo's, and the crest the same as a macaw's. After leaving this flat, we passed through some scrub, and came upon another of the same description. Here I narrowly escaped being killed. My ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... dagger and, following her to the bathing place on the river bank, he cut out his own heart, cast it at her feet, and fell down lifeless. The girl fled, terrified, and a crow pounced upon the heart, and carried it to a hollow dao-tree, when it fell from his beak into the hollow and there remained. But the love for the girl was so strong in the heart that it became reanimated and clothed again with humanity in the form of a little child. A hunter, pursuing the ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... bees, there occurs in the Nuttall Codex 4 (Pl. 3, fig. 4) a curious representation of an insect with a pointed beak-like structure and a spine at the posterior extremity of its human-like body. It is engaged in apparent conflict with a man and ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... movement leant forward and sideways to peer, bringing my face near to the boat's rail. In the same instant, I found myself looking down into a white demoniac face, human save that the mouth and nose had greatly the appearance of a beak. The thing was gripping at the side of the boat with two flickering hands—gripping the bare, smooth outer surface, in a way that woke in my mind a sudden memory of the great devilfish which had clung to the side of the wreck we had passed in the previous dawn. I saw ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... from his dreams, twisted his large neck around to look for the lion, saw a lion's flank, and fastened its eagle beak in it. For the griffin had been artificially made by the King-enchanter, and the two halves had never really got used to each other. So now the eagle half of the griffin, who was still rather sleepy, believed that it was fighting a lion, and the lion ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... nothing to forgive," said Anna, watching the gulls; one dropped down suddenly, and rose again with a fish in its beak, the sun for an instant catching the silver of the scales. "It is no affair of mine. It is for Else ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... threw it on the floor of the balcony. The crow stopped his cawing, cocked his head on one side, and eyed the tempting morsel. Buttered toast did not often come his way. He dropped down on to the balcony floor, hopped over to the toast, pecked at it, picked it up in his strong beak, and flew with it to the roof of the building opposite. In silence the two men watched him ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... Desire. However, he was determined not to let this bird fly away; so he took up some water in the palm of his hand and held it to its beak. ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... tell ye they luked like that to me," said Honeybird. "An' just as he was passin' me I seen a wee beak keekin 'out a' his pocket, an' sez I to myself: 'Thon's Father Ryan's bantam hen.'" Honeybird had an attentive audience. "An' sez I to him: 'Drap ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... [nothing else; that was its real quality, whatever fine name they might give it, says the vehement Princess], we heard a sharp tapping at the window; and started up in surprise, to see what it could be. It was a raven, carrying in its beak a bit of bread, which it left on the window-sill, and flew away." [Ib. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... St. Philemon in greater numbers than anywhere else. The best places were quickly taken, the hollows in the trees, the holes in the walls, the forks of the apple-trees and the elms, and you could see a brown beak, like the point of a sword, sticking out of a wisp of straw between all the rafters of the roof. One year, when all the places were taken, I suppose, a tomtit, in her embarrassment, spied the slit of the letter-box protected by its little roof, at the right of the parsonage ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... a nook in the scraggy-looking little antique village but what was sought for with avidity and thronged with occupants. Whoever has seen a flock of hungry pigeons, in the spring, alight on the leaf-covered ground, beneath a forest, and apply the busy powers of claw and beak to obtain a share of the hidden acorns that may be scratched up from beneath, may form some just notion of the pressing hurry and bustle that marked life in this place. The enhanced price that everything ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... some danger lies O'er her young brood, and, with wild eyes, Straight at the sudden foe she flies, Her full soul spurred To battle with the gnashing beak— A roaring tiger is more meek; And somehow one is bound to speak Well of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... and well-nigh staked herself on the heron's beak! But we had a long ride, and were well-nigh at the Tyne before we had caught her. Full of pranks, but a noble hawk, as I shall write to my brother by the next messenger that comes our way. I call it a hawk worth her meat that leads one ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fitted with gargoyles round the brim for rainy weather. He also made an initial "I," and then was seen in Punch no more until the Almanac for 1882, when he made a full-page ornithological drawing of "Up before the Beak." ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... cat, enters it from her sleeping chamber. She wears a tulle cap, under which hangs awry a front of false hair; her gaping slippers flop as she walks across the room. Her features are oldish and flabby; from their midst springs a nose like the beak of a parrot. Her small fat hands, her person plump as a church rat, her bust too full and tremulous, are all in harmony with the room. About fifty years of age, Madame Vauquer looks as most women do who say ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... and watched them disappear around the corner. There was a vaguely lonesome feeling somewhere in the region of his heart. He went on past the entrance of the San Francisco Stock Exchange and almost collided with a bent-over, shrewd-faced man, whose eagle-beak and penetrating eyes were a ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Keppel had a gown worthy of the Roman Empress she looks, with that beak nose and nutcracker chin. 'Twas a black velvet petticoat, embroidered in chenille, the pattern a great gold wicker basket filled to spilling over with ramping flowers that climbed and grew all about her person. ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... that worked the will of the gods spread its dark wings and flew back to its eyrie, the Titan endured the cruel mercy of having his body grow whole once more. But with daybreak there came again the silent shadow, the smell of the unclean thing, and again with fierce beak and talons the vulture ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... a printed wedding certificate, done in blue and gold with a colored picture of two clasped hands under a white dove with a gold ring in its beak. Beneath was an idealized boat with silken sails bearing two people down a rose-lined river of life; and the whole was bordered with orange blossoms. It was one of those old-fashioned affairs that country ministers used to give their parishioners in the years ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... sides: but Brutus, seeing into their designs, by the swiftness of his ship extricated himself with such address as to get clear, though only by a moment. From the velocity of their motion they struck against each other with such violence that they were both excessively injured by the shock; the beak, indeed, of one of them being broken off, the whole ship was ready to founder, which circumstance being observed, the ships of Brutus's fleet, which were nearest that station, attack them when in this disorder and sink ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... more, And, in the sweep of his Plutonian wings, Dashed to the earth the bust of Pallas fair. The haughty brow lay humbled in the dust, O'ershadowed by the terror-woven wings Of that wild Raven, as by some dark pall. Lift up poor Pallas! bathe her fainting brow With drops of dewy chrism! take the beak Of the false Raven from her sinking soul! Oh, let the Faith Dove nestle in her heart, Her haughty reason low at Jesu's feet, While humble as a child she cons the lore: ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the day was gone, and the night so near, that in the shadows of the tree all was dusky and dim. But there was still light enough to discover that in a niche of the tree sat a huge horned owl, with green spectacles on his beak, and a book in one foot. He took no heed of the intruders, but kept muttering to himself. And what do you think the owl was saying? I will tell you. He was talking about the book that he held upside down in ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... went downstairs, he rested his beak on the steps, lifted his right foot and then his left one; but his mistress feared that such feats would give him vertigo. He became ill and was unable to eat. There was a small growth under his tongue like those chickens are sometimes afflicted with. Felicite pulled ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... motion of the pulse resembles the hasty pecking of the beak of a bird, there is a defect of spirits in ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... a larger stock of game, can boast of eight or at the most ten couples. They are, as is well known, the largest and most powerful of all the birds of prey inhabiting Europe, measuring from eight to eight and a half feet in the span, and possessing terrible strength of beak, talons and wings. A full-grown golden eagle can easily carry off a young chamois, a full-grown roe or a sheep, none of them weighing less than thirty pounds; and well-attested cases have occurred of young children being thus abstracted. In the fall of 1873 a boy nearly eight years of age ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... tried to ram the little spitz-pup of the navy, but her huge iron beak rode up over the slippery deck of the enemy, and when the big vessel looked over her sides to see its wreck, she discovered that the Monitor was right side up and ready ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... the house to its former position. In the autumn of 1826, six months after he had paid his creditors, he died of a broken heart. The Valentins had on their arms: an eagle of gold in a field of sable, crowned with silver, beak and talons with gules, with this device: "The soul has not perished." ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... life must be made blindly, one does not wonder that primitive men settled dark questions by studying the stars, by interpreting the flight of birds, the whimsical zigzags of the lightning bolt, or the turning of the beak of a fowl this way or that in picking corn. The human mind bewildered is ever looking for crevices in the great mystery that inwraps the visible universe, and ever hoping that some struggling beam from beyond may point ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... out. Mahomet came to the mountain. I liked his face less than ever. It wore an angry scowl now; his dark eyes glittered balefully under the close-knit eyebrows, his lips were drawn down, and the curved nose was like the aggressive beak of ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... vain, and they were greatly distressed as to what they would do for food if they had no harvest to look forward to, when suddenly they saw, perched on a little wayside cross, a tiny robin redbreast holding in its beak an ear of wheat! The monks joyfully took the grain, and, sowing it, reaped an abundant harvest! Accounts vary somewhat in the details of this story. Some say that the bird led the monks to a store of grain, and others question the fact that the bird was a ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... and would not even see that the Banksiae were nodding to her; and as for her old friend the blackbird, how vulgar he looked, bobbing up and down hunting worms and woodlice! could anything be more outrageously vulgar than that staring yellow beak of his? She twisted herself round not to see him, and felt quite annoyed that he went on and sang just the same, unconscious of, or ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... Robert Adams, a man in his faculty of excellent skill, omitted nothing in the description, which either his arte could demonstrate, or any mans iudgement thinke woorthy the memory. After an exquisite suruey of the whole frame he found the length from the beak-head to the sterne (whereupon was erected a lanterne) to containe 165 foote. The breadth in the second close decke whereof she had three, this being the place where there was most extension of bredth, was 46 feet and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... her face her eyes would suffer. She may pick berries on the hills, but may not come near the river or sea for a whole year. Were she to eat fresh salmon she would lose her senses, or her mouth would be changed into a long beak.[119] ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Which one, he thought, might safely eat; For there another dove he saw.— He felt the snare around him draw! This wheat was but a treacherous bait To lure poor pigeons to their fate. The snare had been so long in use, With beak and wings he struggled loose: Some feathers perish'd while it stuck; But, what was worst in point of luck, A hawk, the cruellest of foes, Perceived him clearly as he rose, Off dragging, like a runaway, A piece of string. The bird of prey Had bound him, in a moment more, Much faster than ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... looking very frail. I could not help a glance round, which showed me what a little shrine he had made of the box he was lying in. The stars and stripes were triced up above and around a picture of Washington, and he had painted a majestic eagle, with lightnings blazing from his beak and his foot just clasping the whole globe, which his wings overshadowed. The dear old boy saw my glance, and said, with a sad smile, 'Here, you see, I have a country!' And then he pointed to the foot of his bed, where I had not seen before a great map of the United States, as he had drawn ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... poor and unknown artizan. Let it be enough for us to know that he was above the medium height, robust, with sandy hair, a face elongated, flushed and freckled, vivid light gray eyes, the nose shaped like the beak of an eagle, and that he always was dressed like a monk. (Bernaldez, Oviedo, Las Casas, and the author of the Libretto, all eye-witnesses.)—H. Harrisse's "Columbus, and the Bank of ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... with us, was very anxious to keep a young cormorant which he had picked up. He took it under his arm, intending to carry off his prize; but the mother bird attacked him so furiously with its long beak, that it nearly put out one of his eyes, and succeeded in severely biting his lip. On this, Nat very naturally let go the youngster, which scuttled off, determined not to be caught again, and, taking to the water, ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... startled they were, the three of them, at the unexpected sound of a kind of throaty chuckle near by, and turned in affright to see a large bird regarding them from the shadow of the rocks—a sea bird with rounded wings, light-coloured plumage, and curiously staring eyes above a yellow beak. When it saw it was observed it vanished ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... Coon thought that he would drive Solomon out of his snug house and live in it himself. But he soon changed Solomon Owl—so Fatty discovered—had sharp, strong claws and a sharp, strong beak as well, which curled over his face in a ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... current and ripple are dancing in light. We have roused the night raven, I heard him croak, As we plashed along beneath the oak That flings its broad branches so far and so wide, Their shadows are dancing in midst of the tide. "Who wakens my nestlings," the raven he said, "My beak shall ere morn in his blood be red. For a blue swoln corpse is a dainty meal. And I'll have my share with the pike and ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... knelt down and carefully smoothed the feathers of the great pigeon, thrusting a little cotton-wool into its beak to soak up any moisture that might escape and ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... reserving not a morsel for herself. All their gambols and pranks and wild ways she bears with untiring patience. They hop up by twos and threes on her back. They peck at her bill. One saucy little imp actually jumped up and caught hold of the little red lappet above her beak, and, hanging to it, swung back and forth half a dozen times; and she was evidently only amused, and reckoned it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... least, apparently resting on their travels, for they were all standing motionless, with necks drawn in, as if dozing. They were very stately, handsome birds, clear gray in color, with a black collar on the neck, and red beak and legs. My approach did not disturb them until I was within twenty yards of the nearest—for they were scattered over an acre of ground; then they rose with a loud, rustling noise of wings, only to settle again at a short ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... was only a few yards away. He came up eagerly, a slim, dark man with keen gray eyes and a nose like a hawk's beak. ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... any one would have noticed him in a crowd as an unusual type. Instead of being fair, he was as dark as a Moor; instead of turning up, his immensely long and melancholy nose curved downwards over his thin lips like a vulture's beak as if trying to peck at his chin. His eyes were shadowy and uncertain under his prominent forehead and bushy eyebrows. His beard was a mere black wisp, and the points of his scant moustaches were waxed and stood up stiffly. He was the taller of the two, but his hat hung lower ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... loophole in the awning, in evident terror lest something they ought to see should slip by them. Escaping from the jam, we made our way to the bow, carrying stools, umbrellas, and books, and there, on the very beak of all things, we had a fine view. Duly and dutifully we admired Bingen, Cob-lentz, Ehrenbreitstein, Bonn, Drachenfels, and all the other celebrities, and read Childe Harold on the Rhine. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... wooer; and the tall, thin, grim old maid, standing stiff, as sentinel, at the bedroom door, and gimleting both her charges alternately with steel-gray orbs; she seemed like an owl, all eyes and beak. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... I couldn't do without my little Mally." And then my little bird-like beak would rise proudly ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... having exhausted its malignancy without producing any particular effect, ended by gently harmonizing with the captain's sandy hair, reddish beard, and tanned skin. His mouth was like a badly made buttonhole, which gaped a little when he smiled. He had a nose like a parrot's beak, and his eyes were blue, kindly, and wise in their straightforwardness. When he would render his costume absolutely de rigueur, he wore a leathern jacket with manifold pockets, from one to another of which trailed a gold watch-chain with ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... they will never swallow till it has been previously slain. One of them has espied a cockroach in a corner, and in darting towards the prey a scorpion crosses its path. The venomous reptile hugs the belligerent beak in the hope of conveying to it some of its deadly sting; but the tip of Coco's horny appendage is a long way from his tender points, and Scorpio must travel many an inch before he can make the desired impression. Meanwhile the stork has teased Scorpio's life out, and ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... and when Pussy was absent, the pigeon, in return for the protection afforded her against the rats, constituted herself the defender of the kittens—and on any person approaching nearer than she liked, she would fly out and attack them with beak and wings, in the hope of driving them away from her young charges. Frequently, too, after this, when neither the kittens nor her own brood required her care, and the cat went out about the garden or fields, ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... temples, beneath his opera hat. His sanguine complexion, however, had all the freshness ef youth, and his eyes sparkled merrily, as though amused at the spectacle of his nose, which was immense, curved, and polished, like an eagle's beak. He wore perfectly-fitting kid gloves, and the collar of his fur wrapper, falling a little open, showed that he was ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... very different structure from that which is found in the adult frog: it is fringed by a pair of broad fleshy lips armed with rows of tiny horny teeth—a curious place for teeth; the mouth itself is furnished with a pair of teeth—also horny—resembling the beak of a parrot. ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the "Condor," a perfectly hideous bird as large as a cow and as fierce as a tiger. If ever I dared go down that street and disobey my mother, the Condor would "swoop" down over the roofs, snatch me up in his long yellow beak with the blood of the last boy on it, and with thunder and lightning would carry me off far over the clouds and drop me ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... to the window every morning at breakfast-time for a piece of bread-and-butter, and if the window was closed he would rap impatiently upon it with his beak. He roosted in the orchard just across the road on the trunk of an ancient leaning apple-tree. One night Bell heard a terrible fluttering, and looking out saw a fox making off with the peacock; he shouted and the fox dropped the peacock and bolted. ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... and the hands, and the feet; but of all the features, or other appliances of the human frame, the mouth and the nose have the greatest influence in producing an impression of gentility. This was peculiarly the case with the stranger, whose beak, like that of an ancient galley, gave the promise of a stately movement, and whose beautiful teeth and winning smile, often relieved the expression of a countenance that was not unfrequently stern. As he ceased speaking, Dutton ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... big, ungainly, beak-nosed boy, whose sleeves were much too short, and trousers-legs likewise, to hide Nature's abundant gift to him in the matter of bone and knuckle. He was freckled and wore a grin that was ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... succeeded in capturing, in a dark alder-o'ershaded pool, a monstrous individual, nearly three feet in length, and proportionally bulky, with a snout bent over the lower jaw at its symphysis, like the beak of a hawk, and as deeply tinged (though with more of brown in its complexion) as the blackest coal-fish I ever saw. It must have been a bull-trout, a visitor from the neighbouring river; but we all concluded ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... assail the insurgent mentalities of the youth and morning vigour of the inexpressible human soul, when, flushed with AEolian light, and, as it were, beaded with those lustrous dews which the eternal Aurora lets fall from her melodious lip; if it escape living from the beak of the vulture (no fable here!), then, indeed, it may aspire ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... thine eye. Below the glass of that river, the pike darts on his prey; the circle in the wave, the soft plash amongst the reeds, are but signs of Destroyer and Victim. In the ivy round the oak by the margin, the owl hungers for the night, which shall give its beak and its talons living food for its young; and the spray of the willow trembles with the wing of the redbreast, whose bright eye sees the worm on the sod. Canst thou count too, O Man! all the cares, all the sins, that those noiseless rooftops conceal? With every curl of that smoke ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cuttle-fish and squids, some of them of as great bulk as himself. These cuttle-fish's tentacle discs are as big as soup-plates, and surrounded by hooks as large and sharp as tiger claws; while their mouths are armed with a parrot-like beak capable of rending anything held to them by the tentacles. These disc hooks are often found in ambergris, an excretion of the sperm whale. The sperm whale spouts diagonally, other whales upwards. So-called porpoise leather is made of the skin of the white ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... he began to struggle, whereupon all the other birds took fright and flew away. But presently his mate came back and hovered over him, then alighted on the net, unobserved by the fowler, and fell to picking and pulling at the mesh in which the male bird's foot was entangled with her beak, till she released him and they flew away together. Then the fowler came up and mended his net and seated himself afar off. After awhile, the birds came back and the female pigeon was caught in the net, whereupon all the other ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... now come to the dining-room, at the entrance to which sat a factor, receiving accounts, and, what gave me cause for astonishment, rods and axes were fixed to the door-posts, superimposed, as it were, upon the bronze beak of a ship, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... base; on another a bunch of lilies of the valley; and another showed a little bough of apple blossoms. On the remaining three the subjects were strangely unusual,—a palm and tent, with a patch of sky; a bird with outstretched wings, soaring upward with open beak, as if singing in its flight; a cherub head with a soft ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an undertaker eating ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... fair wind, and, after a long navigation, the first place we touched at was a desert island, where we found an egg of a roc, equal in size to that I formerly mentioned. There was a young roc in it, just ready to be hatched, and its beak had begun to break the egg. The merchants who landed with me broke the egg with hatchets, and made a hole in it, pulled out the young roc, piecemeal, and roasted it. I had in vain entreated them not to meddle with ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... mother-of-pearl. Here we found sundry tents of the Tagaygt-Huwaytt, the half Fellahs that own and spoil the once goodly land; the dogs barked at us, but the men never thought of offering us hospitality. We had an admirable view of the Tihmah Mountains—Zahd, with its "nick;" the parrot-beak of Jebel el-Sht; the three perpendicular Pinnacles and flying Buttresses of Jebel 'Urnub; the isolated lump of Jebel Fs; the single cupola of Jebel Harb; the huge block of Dibbagh, with its tall truncated tower; the little Umm Jedayl, here looking like a pyramid; and the four mighty ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... with these thoughts, two vivid little paroquets alighted near him, to quarrel noisily, then make up and kiss each other like any pair of lovers. It was disgusting. A toucan peered at him with an appearance of exaggerated curiosity, due to its huge, grotesquely proportioned beak. Now and then came the harsh notes of parrots as they fluttered high above the tree- tops. Meanwhile the young man's ears became attuned to the jungle noises, his eyes observant of the many kinds of life ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... flapping away to the middle of the marsh. Now, an hour afterward, he is still standing there, towering above the tall grass. Once when I turned that way I saw, as I thought, a stake, and then something moved upon it,—a bird of some kind. And what an enormous beak! I raised my field-glass. It was the heron. His body was the post, and his head was the bird. Meanwhile, the sandpiper has stolen away, I know not when or where. He must have omitted the tweet, tweet, with which ordinarily he signalizes his flight. He is the first ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... places where the eyes had been; for the eyes themselves were quite gone, and the sockets cleaned out to the very bottom. Now, I reasoned that no quadruped could do this. The holes were too small even for a jackal to get his slender snout into. The work must have been done by the beak of a bird; and what sort of bird. Why, ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... I have dream'd. Hear, and expound my dream. My geese are twenty, which within my walls I feed with sodden wheat; they serve to amuse Sometimes my sorrow. From the mountains came An eagle, huge, hook-beak'd, brake all their necks, 670 And slew them; scatter'd on the palace-floor They lay, and he soar'd swift into the skies. Dream only as it was, I wept aloud, Till all my maidens, gather'd by my voice, Arriving, found me weeping still, and still Complaining, that the eagle ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... Wardens perceived them, they shouted and threw showers of arrows and darts at them, but the hawks evaded all of these until the missiles were spent, and then seized each an apple in his talons. But Brian seized two, for he took one in his beak as well. Then they flew as swiftly as they might to the shore where they had left their boat. Now the King of that garden had three fair daughters, to whom the apples and the garden were very dear, and he transformed ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... the lair; the horror of his mother's paw that smote him down whenever he approached the mouth of the cave; and, later on, the fear of the steep bank, learned by a terrible fall; the fear of the yielding water, learned by attempting to walk upon it; and the fear of the ptarmigan's beak and the weasel's teeth, learned by ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... then twitter with congratulatory laughter at his tumble. Let us get beneath them quietly. We can see them now, black against the brightening eastern sky. See that fellow give his neighbour a push with his beak, and hear the assaulted one scream out just like Mr. Thomas Sawyer in Sunday-school, whose special chum stuck a pin into him for the pleasure of hearing ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... them to their Kennel, and wash their Feet with Beer and Butter, or some such thing, and pick and search their Cleys, for Thorns, Stubs, or the like: If it is in Winter, let a Fire be made, and let them beak and stretch themselves for an hour or so at the fire, and suffer them to lick, pick, and trim themselves; hereby to prevent the Diseases incident to them, upon sudden Cooling, as ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett |
