"Carrion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seen that for himself with his one eye.... Maybe you don't believe it? Well, I'll tell it out and prove it. I have got sure word by running messenger that came cross-cutting over the ridge of the hill.... That carrion that came in a coach, pressing to bring away the Princess before nightfall, giving himself out to be some great one, is no other than Taig the Tailor, that should be called Taig the Twister, down from his mother's house from Oughtmana, that ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... pikemen fell back appalled, and hid their eyes; and those who were of the north crossed themselves, and those who came from the south bent two fingers horse-shoe fashion. But Hannibal de Tavannes laughed; laughed in his moustache, his teeth showing, and bade them move that carrion to a distance, for it would smell when the sun was high. Then he turned his back on the street, and looked ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... cycle, awaited in new thirst like a hunter in the gap, where he could escape from the cycle, where the end of the causes, where an eternity without suffering began. He killed his senses, he killed his memory, he slipped out of his self into thousands of other forms, was an animal, was carrion, was stone, was wood, was water, and awoke every time to find his old self again, sun shone or moon, was his self again, turned round in the cycle, felt thirst, overcame the ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... I placed in you, sirrah?' he rejoined, in a terrible voice; and stooping still farther forward he probed me with his eyes. 'You who prate of trust and confidence, who received your life on parole, and but for your promise to me would have been carrion this month past, answer me that? What of the trust ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... one great danger. Floating logs, huge trees, acres of tangled greenery, the sweepings of a hundred miles of jungle, covered its surface with other and ghastlier trove. Here the saurians of Pancha's curse worried a drowned pig, there they fought over a cow's swollen carcass; yet because of carrion taste or food plethora, they let her by. There an enormous saber, long and thick as a church, turned and tumbled, threshing air and water with enormous spreading branches, creating dangerous swirls and eddies. These she avoided, and, having swum the river at ebb and flood every day of her life from ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... which is questionable,—for I have met them fleeing from the town,—my life would pay the forfeit. Alive, I may be of some use to you, and you are welcome to my life in that way,—I am giving it freely. Dead, I should be a mere lump of carrion. Who remembers even the names of those who have been done to death in the Southern States for the ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... before the serpentining fold, Stood in our seer's wide eye No higher than man most high, And lowest in heart when highest in hope to hold Fast as a scripture furled The scroll of all the world Sealed with his signet: nor the blind and bold First thief of empire, round whose head Swarmed carrion flies for bees, on flesh ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... dugouts at night, and filched cheese and crackers right through the heavy waterproofed covering of our haversacks. They squealed and fought among themselves at all hours. I think it possible that they were carrion eaters, but never, to my knowledge, did they attack living men. While they were unpleasant bedfellows, we became so accustomed to them that we were not greatly concerned about ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... service to him for many years to come; he put this thought away from him on the spot with fury, as though there were contained in it a new insult to that Malek-Adel whom he considered he had wronged so already.... Yes, indeed! this jade, this carrion he, like a blind idiot, had put on a level with him, Malek-Adel! And as to the service the jade could be to him!... as though he would ever deign to get astride of him? Never! on no consideration!!... He would sell him to a Tartar ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... course, a strong Eastern colouring. It is best appreciated by dwellers in those lands. They tell us that no sooner is some sickly animal dead, or some piece of carrion thrown out by the way, than the vultures—for the eagle does not prey upon carrion—appear. There may not have been one visible a moment before in the hot blue sky, but, taught by scent or by sight that their banquet is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... they had no scruples concerning the matter. Besides, every one along the Arizona border hated a wolf almost as badly as they did a cowardly coyote; for while the former may be bolder than the beast that slinks across the desert looking for carrion, its capacity for mischief is a good many ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... may perhaps be due to a large admixture of Hindu blood through their women, during a social contact with the Hindus extending over many centuries, and also to the fact that they eat flesh when they can obtain it, including carrion. Such types are, however, exceptional among the impure castes, and there is no reason to doubt their general origin from the non-Aryan tribes, which in a few instances can be directly traced. Thus it seems likely that the Kanjars, Berias, Sansias and other gipsy groups, as well as the Mirasis, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... bones of my kinsman, Cuthbert of Fastcastle, of my brother Cockburn and his son, and the father and brother of my Alison. Ye come to remind me of this; and that, as a reward for the shedding of our blood, the head of the chief of our house has been fixed upon the gate of Edinburgh as food for the carrion crow and the night owl! Go, get thee refreshment, Trotter; then go to rest, and dream of other heads exalted, as your late master's is, and I will be the interpreter of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... morals and magnanimities?" He spoke to the creature, who jumped up, eager and happy, and apparently ready for orders and impatient to execute them. "Get some men; go with the dog—he will show you that carrion; and take a priest along to arrange about insurance, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the fate of a place the abode of serpents, and of carrion, of toads and frogs, solely chosen to avoid expense. Such was the bad taste of the King in all things, and his proud haughty pleasure in forcing nature; which neither the most mighty war, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... soul, Breathless and naked on th' ensanguin'd plain, Midst friends and brothers, sons and fathers slain. No pitying hand his languid eyes to close, He breathes his last amidst insulting foes; His body plunder'd, massacred, abus'd; By Christians—Christian fun'ral rites refus'd— Thrown as a carrion in the public way, To Dogs, to Britons, and to Birds a prey. Enwrapt in sulph'rous flame and clouds of smoke, Brave Gard'ner sinks beneath the deadly stroke, And Warren bleeds to grace the bloody strife, And for his injur'd country gives his life. ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... sea was rolling, and a heavy surf, tumbling and breaking at the mouth of the river, prevented the boat from getting out. Horrors increased upon them. The mangled bodies of Diego Tristan and his men came floating down the stream, and drifting about the harbor, with flights of crows, and other carrion birds, feeding on them, and hovering, and screaming, and fighting about their prey. The forlorn Spaniards contemplated this scene with shuddering; it appeared ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... that he would rather call the knacker and have his horses thrown into the carrion pit than lead them back, in that condition, to his stable at Kohlhaasenbrueck. Without bothering himself further about the nags, he left them standing where they were, and, declaring that he should know how to get his rights, mounted ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... There is of the best blood of France in its veins." His lips curled, whimsically. "'Tis strange, that, n'es-ce pas? In that small piece of carrion which you hold there upon your knees runs the blood of three kings." Again he laughed, musically. ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... mechanism of one of our common orchids or milkweeds that are adjusted with such marvelous delicacy to the length of a bee's tongue or of a butterfly's leg; learn why so many flowers have sticky calices or protective hairs; why the skunk cabbage, purple trillium, and carrion flower emit a fetid odor while other flowers, especially the white or pale yellow night bloomers, charm with their delicious breath; see if you cannot discover why the immigrant daisy already whitens our fields with descendants as numerous ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... simpletons, not saints. Quite true: but seeing into character is not what Jesus is condemning here. The 'judging' of which He speaks sees motes in a brother's eye. That is to say, it is one-sided, and fixes on faults, which it magnifies, passing by virtues. Carrion flies that buzz with a sickening hum of satisfaction over sores, and prefer corruption to soundness, are as good judges of meat as such critics are of character. That Mephistophelean spirit of detraction has wide scope in this day. Literature and politics, as well as social life ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... is the cloud of men and shields, Slow moving up through Verdal's fields: These Verdal folks presume to bring Their armed force against their king. On! let us feed the carrion crow,— Give her a feast in every blow; And, above all, let Throndhjem's hordes Feel the sharp edge of ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... rites have been printed. Nearly every writer lays stress on the fact that pieces of the dead bodies are dropped by the vultures within the grounds or in the streets outside. This is an absurdity, as the vulture never rises on the wing with any carrion—he eats it on the spot and he will not leave until he is gorged to repletion. An effort was made several years ago to remove these towers of silence on Malabar hill because of complaints that fragments of corpses were found in the neighborhood. When two competent ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... and the earth with which they were filled, and reached the cubiculum nearly suffocated. Here, by means of a skylight which was not obstructed by rubbish, he found that the place was used as a deposit for carrion, as the half-putrefied carcass of a bull was lying under the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... you carrion. Get along, what do you mean by it? I'll give it to you!" shouted the policeman. He was evidently tired, and he had had too much of her. She advanced a few ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... in the style of a conqueror is meant. At best, it will appear to such wavering persons, (if such there are,) whom we mean to fix with us, a choice whether they are to continue a prey to domestic banditti, or to be fought for as a carrion carcass and picked to the bone by all the crows and vultures of the sky. They may take protection, (and they would, I doubt not,) but they can have neither alacrity nor zeal in such a cause. When they see nothing but bands of English, Spaniards, Neapolitans, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to rich folk, millet to the poor, Broken scraps for holy men that beg from door to door; Cattle to the tiger, carrion to the kite, And rags and bones to wicked wolves without the wall at night. Naught he found too lofty, none he saw too low— Parbati beside him watched them come and go; Thought to cheat her husband, turning Shiv to jest— Stole the little grasshopper and hid it in her ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... Corpse. — N. corpse, corse[obs3], carcass, cadaver, bones, skeleton, dry bones; defunct, relics, reliquiae[Lat], remains, mortal remains, dust, ashes, earth, clay; mummy; carrion; food for worms, food for fishes; tenement of clay this mortal coil. shade, ghost, manes. organic remains, fossils. Adj. cadaverous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... licence of the truce, I went, last night, to the Christian camp: I had an interview with the Christian king; and when he heard my name and faith, his very beard curled with ire. 'Hound of Belial!' he roared forth, 'has not thy comrade carrion, the sorcerer Almamen, sufficiently deceived and insulted the majesty of Spain? For his sake, ye shall have no quarter. Tarry here another instant, and thy corpse shall be swinging to the winds! Go, and count over thy misgotten wealth; just census shall be taken of it; and if thou defraudest ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... except with one who is of trusty stuff, One who is true of thought and deed and eke of good descent. Wine's like the wind, that, if it breathe on perfume, smells as sweet, But, if o'er carrion it pass, imbibes ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... they knew, the great bones would be cleanly picked by the carrion birds, the lesser cats, the wolves and foxes and ...
— Project Mastodon • Clifford Donald Simak
... he, "like the carrion crows at judgment! Halt!" he ordered, for already I had taken the first step. "When I need to send a havildar," said he, "to ask my men's permission, I will call for a havildar! To the rear where you belong!" he ordered. And I went round to the rear, knowing something of ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... success in the vicinity of the Straits of Magellan. The avifauna, with the exception of waterfowl, is also limited to comparatively few species. Birds of prey are represented by the condor, vulture, two species of the carrion-hawk (Polyborus), and owl. The Chilean slopes of the Andes appear to be a favourite haunt of the condor, where neighbouring stock-raisers suffer severe losses at times from its attacks. The Insessores are represented by a number of species. Parrots are found as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... mouths, Hungering, but hard to fill,—all swooping down To gorge upon the meat of wicked ones; Whereof the limbs disparted, trunks and heads, Offal and marrow, littered all the way. By such a path the king passed, sore afeared If he had known of fear, for the air stank With carrion stench, sickly to breathe; and lo! Presently 'thwart the pathway foamed a flood Of boiling waves, rolling down corpses. This They crossed, and then the Asipatra wood Spread black in sight, whereof the undergrowth Was sword-blades, spitting, every blade, ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... in the toils. Silent you are still a man; give tongue and you are simple carrion. You must come to the knees of Burgundy. You shall ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of carrion at the foot of the Great Staircase, and open wide the Palace doors, that men may note my vengeance at the same time as the insult done ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... carrion, and sure that this must be a fresh corpse, the bird swooped down upon the boy. But he was awake now, and perceiving the eagle, he determined by its ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... species of winged creature one had hoped ever to see even in Zoo cages or the cases of museums seemed here to live and fly and have its songful being. Great sluggish zopilotes of the horrid vulture family strolled or circled lazily about, seeking the scent of carrion. Long-legged, snow-white herons stood in the marshes. Great flocks of small black birds that could not possibly have numbered less than a hundred thousand each rose and fell and undulated in waves and curtains against the background of mountains beyond, ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... dialects not by the Persian, whose "Rubah" can never be mistaken for "Shaghal." "Sa'lab" among the Semites is locally applied to either beast and we can distinguish the two only by the fox being solitary and rapacious, and the jackal gregarious and a carrion-eater. In all Hindu tales the jackal seems to be an awkward substitute for the Grecian and classical fox, the Giddar or Kola (Cants aureus) being by no means sly and wily as the Lomri (Vulpes vulgaris). This is remarked by Weber (Indische Studien) and Prof. Benfey's ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... neither run swiftly nor walk silently, and they could be approached easily even by a tiger that cracked a twig with every step. It simplified the problem of living immensely; and just as any other feline would have done, she took the line of least resistance. If there had been plenty of carrion in the jungle, Nahara might never have hunted men. But the kites and the jackals looked after the carrion; and they were much swifter and keener-eyed ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... They were men who had committed themselves to a war against the elements, a war against all that opposed them in their hunger for the wage they were determined to tear from the frigid bosom of an earth which they regarded as the vulture regards carrion. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... give very little to the horses to eat in summer, and nothing at all in the winter, they die fast. You have only to drag the carcass to an outhouse at a little distance from the town, and with your rifle watch during the night. The wolves will come down to prey upon the carrion, and it is hard if you do not kill your couple during the night, and then you are rewarded by the commune. I do not know what the price is now, but when the King of Holland was in possession of Belgium it was one hundred francs for a male, and three hundred francs for ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Swan carelessly. "Bless you, whether their folks air rich or poor, they never think at that age what it costs to clothe 'em. I never found with my boys that they'd done climbing for crows' eggs till such time as they bought their own breeches. After that trees were nought but lumber, and crows were carrion." ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... herself the right to have him turned off the stage by Jimmy, with a smack in the eye, before everybody: the footy rotter, coming there to defy her! Well, there would be no smack in the eye; she would simply hand him over to Ave Maria, as one flings a lump of carrion to a tigress! ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... from those roofs, doubtless, many a wistful look was turned in the direction of lovely France. Much had the poor inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace of England be it said—of England, in general so kind and bountiful. Rations of carrion meat, and bread from which I have seen the very hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment even for the most ruffian enemy, when helpless and a captive; and such, alas! was the fare in those casernes. And then, those visits, or ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... exquisite food, fit even for royalty, and were reckoned as thorough French delicacies. There were at that time heronries, as at a later period there were pheasantries. People also ate birds of prey, and only rejected those which fed on carrion. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... heard mention of Shagpat, and the desire for vengeance in the Vizier, he was as a new man, and he smelt the sweetness of his own revenge as a vulture smelleth the carrion from afar, and he said, 'I am thy servant, thy slave, O Vizier!' Then smiled he as to his own soul, and he exclaimed, 'On my head ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... see then how thou wouldst cheat me, thou cursed woman; I know not why I do not eat thee up too, but it is well for thee that thou art a tough old carrion. Here is good game, which comes very quickly to entertain three ogres of my acquaintance who are to pay me a visit ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... his. His younger brother Oliver is worth a whole pack of such down-looked, smooth-faced hypocrites. Oliver Chadwyck is the boy for a snug quarrel. His fingers itch for a drubbing, and he scents a feud as a crow scents out carrion. The other—mercy on me!—is fit for nought but to be bed-ridden and priest-ridden like his father and his ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... arranging hostages. Hailing the fort on the morning of the 6th and securing no answer, Lisiansky again played his cannon on the barricade. That night a curious sound, that was neither chant nor war-cry, came from the thick woods. At daylight carrion crows were seen circling above the barricade. Three hundred Russians landed. Approaching cautiously for fear of ambuscade, they clambered over the {314} palisades and looked. The fort was deserted. Naught of the Sitkans remained but thirty dead warriors and all their children, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... look at this carrion! One may as well see upon whom our friend here has put his mark." So saying he stooped and turned over the man, the first of the two who had fallen. He lay half in a stagnant pool of water, and was quite dead, as we could see, for the moon fell clearly on his evil and distorted ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... will furnish us with another parallel case. Mariana, the classical historian of Spain, tells the story of the ill-starred marriage which the King Don Alonso brought about between the heirs of Carrion and the two daughters of the Cid. The Cid bestowed a princely dower on the sons-in-law. But the young men were base and proud, cowardly and cruel. They were tried in danger, and found wanting. They fled before the Moors, and once, when a lion broke out of his den, they ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... unconsciousness, a noble preoccupation with good and pure things, which is a far more promising protective from evil and its temptations than a keen scent and an eager notice of every tainted thing in the wind. If you choose the crow for your guide, you must expect your goal to be carrion. The travellers, who, after making the tour of the United States, write books taken up with the frequency of divorce among us, or devoted to such limited and exceptional aspects as that presented by ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... holding before her the bloody evidence of the deed—'and here is the tongue of Lagrange,—the tongue that would have proclaimed your shame and effected your ruin, had its owner lived; but he now lies a cold corpse, and this once mischievous member is now as powerless as a piece of carrion beneath ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... wish to live to be Commanded by this masse of slaverie, Since reason, judgement, resolution, And scorne of what we feare, will yeeld to feare? 15 While this same sincke of sensualitie swels, Who would live sinking in it? and not spring Up to the starres, and leave this carrion here, For wolfes, and vultures, and for dogges to teare? O Clermont D'Ambois, wert thou here to chide 20 This softnesse from my flesh, farre as my reason, Farre as my resolution not to stirre One foote out of the way for death and hell! Let my false ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... I'd make a quarry/With thousands] Why a quarry? I suppose, not because he would pile them square, but because he would give them for carrion to ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... herbs, with scarce aught that might be called a flower amongst them. Trees there were yet, but the most of them stark dead, and the best dying fast. No beasts she saw, nor fowl; nothing but lizards and beetles, and now and again a dry grey adder coiled up about a sun-burned stone. But of great carrion flies, green and blue, were there a many, and whiles they buzzed about her head till she sickened with loathing of them. All this she found on her way as she went up toward the place where erst was the great ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... to the hayfield outside of Brussels, between two Jesuits, followed by a number of a peculiar kind of monks called love-brothers. Those holy men goaded her as she went, telling her that she was the devil's carrion, and calling on her to repent at the last moment, and thus save her life and escape eternal damnation beside. But the poor soul had no ear for them, and cried out that, like Stephen, she saw the heavens opening, and the angels stooping down ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... adds: "Whatever they may have been when their island was called Insula Sacra, there are no people in Europe who are more squeamish in the use of meats than the modern Irish peasantry, for they have a horror of every kind of carrion;" albeit he is obliged to confess that, though they abuse the French for eating frogs, and the English for eating rooks, there is evidence to prove that horseflesh was eaten in Ireland, even in ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... watch. Peter struck true and deep. John clapped his hands on the ill-fated pirate's mouth to stifle the dying groan. He fell forward. Four boys caught him to prevent the thud. Peter gave the signal, and the carrion was cast overboard. There was a splash, and then silence. ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... is erected of dry wood, on which the body of the dead is laid, and in course of time after igniting the faggots the corpse is consumed. While this cineration is going on vultures and carrion fowl not infrequently pounce down upon the body, and tear away pieces of flesh from the ghastly, smoking corpse. These charred parts of the body they carry away to their nests to feast upon at leisure. ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... carrion aft!' I heard the inhuman brute say to his followers. 'Let the "white trash" see the dog's carcass! He will then believe what I have said, Name of God! and know what is ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... coroner for having introduced the evidence of a woman known by every one to be lacking in balanced mentality. There were others who, by their remarks, showed that they were concealing the real truth of their thoughts and only using a cloak of interest to guide them to other food for the carrion proclivities of their minds. To all of them Fairchild and Harry made the same reply: that they had nothing to say, that they had given all the information possible on the witness stand during the inquest, and that there ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... chattering birds, my lass, and droning flies: They're proper Whigs, are birds and flies,—or else The Whigs are proper crows and carrion-bugs. ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... will bring hostlers from the stables living on horse carrion and not accustomed to working on the land! What use will they be in Bogdaniec? Then I vowed to capture three German crests. Where will I find them among ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... are not very careful, you will ruin every hope for success that you may have had in the beginning. The Crown will take it out of your hands. You've got to show yourselves worthy of handling the affairs of this company. You can't do it if you listen to such carrion as Von Blitz and Rasula. Oh, I'm not afraid of you! I know that you have written to Sir John, Rasula, asking that I be recalled. He won't recall me, rest assured, unless he throws up the case. I have his own letters to prove that he is satisfied with my work out here. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... lest I send ye aloft to join yon carrion!" And she pointed where Job's stiff body plunged and swung and twisted at the ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... the nest I saw several small perch, a frog, and a meadow-mouse, all recently brought, though the place had a suspicious odor of carrion. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... her. Your ships Tossing in the great sunset of an Empire, Dawn of a sovereign people, are all manned By heroes, ragged, hungry, who will die Like flies ere long, because they have no food But turns to fever-breeding carrion Not fit for dogs. They are half-naked, hopeless Living, of any reward; and if they die They die a dog's death. We shall reap the fame While they—great God! and all this cannot quench The glory ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... wound she bore Mid-breast, which stooping to, to see the more, Lo, forth from it came busy, one by one, Light-moving ants! So she to her death had gone These many days; and there where she lost life Her carrion shell with it again was rife. So teems the earth, that ere our clay be rotten New hosts sweep clean the hearth, our deeds forgotten. But stooping still, Odysseus saw her not Nor her brisk tenantry; afar his thought, And after it his vision, ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... is concerned. Partridges scarce, not preserved, and the hooded crows and birds of prey making life rather hard for them." Mr Danford further speaks of the chamois-eagle as "not rare in the higher mountains." The fisher-eagle "generally distributed." The king-eagle also "not rare." The carrion-vulture "common throughout the country," also the red-footed falcon. At one time and another I have myself seen most of these birds in the Carpathians, which form the frontier ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... court, and wanted not the intelligence of all dark mysteries through the Scotch in his highness's bed-chamber." A close communication took place between the duke and Preston, who, as Hacket describes, was "a good crow to smell carrion." He obtained an easy admission to the duke's closet at least thrice a week, and their notable conferences Buckingham appears to have communicated to his confidential friends. Preston, intent on carrying all ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... western sky Andy Lanning saw a black dot that moved in wide circles and came up across the heavens slowly, and he knew it was a buzzard that scented carrion and was coming up the wind toward that scent. He had seen them many a time before on their gruesome trails, and the picture which he carried was ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... always faithful to owners," he said, when they reproached him with his crimes. "I always accounted for cargo to the last stiver! As for that carrion," he added (pointing to Glossin), "I have only sent him to the devil a little ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... to three grave-pits in the prison-yard three lumps of lifeless clay, that a few short hours before had been three of God's noblest creatures. Like carrion, they were flung into those unconsecrated pits, and strewed with quicklime. For this was British law. The wolf and the tiger leave some vestiges of their victims; but a special ordinance of English law required even the corpses of those martyred ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... last-named holding my handkerchief to my mouth, and the kawwasses running as though they had been pursued by devils. Everywhere in Damascus, but especially in this quarter, the labyrinthine streets are piled with heaps of offal, wild dogs are gorged with carrion, and dead dogs are lying about. One must never judge Damascus, however by externals: every house has a mean aspect in the way of entrance and approach. This is done purposely to deceive the Government, and ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... consequences would follow, especially myselfe and Mr. Prence, yet notwithstanding it was required, according to order, to be voted: But the governor would not suffer it to come to vote, as being that indeed would eate out the power of Godlines, &c.... You would have admired to have seen how sweet this carrion relished to the pallate of most of the deputies! What will be the issue of these things, our all ordering God onely knows.... But if he have such a judgment for this place, I trust we shall finde (I speake for many of us that groane under these things) a resting place among you ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... natural death, that art joint-twin To sweetest slumber! no rough-bearded comet Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl Beats not against thy casement, the hoarse wolf Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse, Whilst ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... boss the little mob stopped. Then the Irishman spoke in a voice that rumbled and shook with menacing rage. "Ye, Manuel an' Pedro—drag that carrion off the right-av-way, an' tell him when he wakes up av he values his life to shtay out av rache av me two hands. The rest av ye hombres git ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... and smell of carrion, so common in camping places during that first journey, also were gone. No bleached bones, even, showed where the exhausted dumb brute had died. The graves of the dead pioneers had all been leveled by the hoofs of stock and the ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... Deerslayer?" the girl demanded, in the tones of a firm minded woman. "He is the brother of a Delaware chief; my heart is all Delaware. Come forth, miserable Briarthorn, and wash the Iroquois paint from your face; stand before the Hurons the crow that you are. You would eat the carrion of your own dead, rather than starve. Put him face to face with Deerslayer, chiefs and warriors; I will show you how great a knave you have ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... the splendour of a simple thought, Whether for England or her enemies, Went in the night, and in the morning died; Each bleeding piece of human earth that lies Stark to the carrion wind, and groaning cries For burial—each Jesu crucified— Hath surely won the thing he dearly bought, For wrong is right, when ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... take the carrion, if you want to. But I think you can do no more than order it to be flung into a ditch and ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... French Revolution. Thousands of us learnt to be interested in him as the 'good Arthur,' 'the excellent Arthur,' of Thomas Carlyle, a writer who had the art of making not only his own narrative, but the sources of it, attractive. Even 'Carrion-Heath,' in the famous introductory chapter to the Cromwell, is invested with a kind of charm, whilst in the stormy firmament of the French Revolution the star of Arthur Young twinkles with a mild effulgency. The autobiography of such a man could hardly fail to ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle down. Hire some old crock, safety. Wren had one the other day at the auction but a lady's. Developing waterways. James ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... frequently found stranded on the beaches of Cape Cod and Long Island. Old colonial records are full of the lawsuits growing out of these pieces of treasure-trove, the finder, the owner of the land where the gigantic carrion lay stranded, and the colony all claiming ownership, or at least shares. By 1650 all the northern colonies had begun to pursue the business of shore whaling to some extent. Crews were organized, boats kept in readiness on the beach, and whenever a whale was sighted ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... canoe, to examine the course of this river, a certain distance up. On entering the stream, they saw a great number of birds, which they took at first for turkeys, so much they resembled them, but which were only a kind of carrion eagles, vulgarly called turkey-buzzards. We were not a little astonished to see Mr. de Montigny return on foot and alone; he soon informed us of the reason: having ascended the Kowlitzk about ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... as a carrion's cry To lullaby Such as I'd sing to thee - Were I thy bride! A feather's press Were leaden heaviness To my caress. But then, unhappily, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... hideous grip at his throat, blows rained upon his head, sharp sobbing breaths torn from his panting breast ... a red stain upon the dusty road ... a huddled figure ... silence. And he who had been a man indeed a few brief, bright years, was no more now than carrion; and he who through all his boasted aeons had not yet reached the stature of a man stood above the dead body, his face no longer menacing, but beautiful with a smiling delight in his deed. And then suddenly the spell that held the child was broken, and he leaped out upon the murderer ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "Ah! you carrion meat," shouted Phormio, shaking his fists under the helpless creature's nose. "Honest men have their day at last. There's a gay hour coming before Zeus claps the lid over ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... he endured a period of mental agony which took all the heart out of him. He understood the methods of the prairie so well that he feared the very worst. A tree—a lariat—and he saw, in fancy, a crowd of carrion swarming round his swinging body. He could conceive no other object, and his nerves became ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... get some sort of a plague and die in great numbers. Indeed some years at the ranch they seemed almost to have disappeared. Their carcasses are destroyed almost immediately by the carrion creatures, and their delicate bones, scattered by the ravens, buzzards, and coyotes, soon disintegrate and pass into the soil. One does not find many evidences of the destruction that has been at work; yet he will see tens instead of myriads. I have been at the ranch when one was ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... body-segments being hard and firm, while the relatively long legs possess well-defined segments and are often spiny. Such a larva is evidently far less unlike its parent beetle than a caterpillar is unlike a butterfly. Perhaps of all beetle larvae, the woodlouse-like grub (fig. 12 b) of a carrion-beetle (Silpha) or of a semi-aquatic dascillid such as Helodes shows the least amount of difference from the typical adult, on account of the conspicuous jointed feelers. The larval glow-worm, however, is of the same woodlouse-like aspect, and in this ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... in England who would give it me," she raved, whispering. "That would there, I swear! But there would be dullards and dastards who would not. He would give it—he! Ay, mock as thou wilt! But between his high honour and love and me thy carrion ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... fact, nothing alive which it can master seems to come amiss, and failing to make a meal from something it has caught and killed, the Arctic fox is glad, like foxes in more favoured lands, to feed on carrion. ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... remark the pacha and Mustapha could not help laughing: having recovered his gravity, Mustapha observed, "One would imagine, old carrion that thou art, that the idea of such a punishment as the bastinado had never entered ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... now rushed into his tent; "watchful sentinels ye are, to leave me to do such hangman's work with my own hand. Be silent, all of you, and cease your senseless clamour!—saw ye never a dead Turk before? Here, cast that carrion out of the camp, strike the head from the trunk, and stick it on a lance, taking care to turn the face to Mecca, that he may the easier tell the foul impostor on whose inspiration he came hither how he has sped on his errand.—For thee, my swart and silent friend," he ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Menteith, "breaking the face, and trampling on the body, of many a better man than himself; and as eager on his sordid spoil as a vulture that stoops upon carrion. Yet this man the world calls a soldier—and you, my lord, select him as worthy of the honours of chivalry, if such they can at this day be termed. You have made the collar of knighthood the decoration ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... that at him, an' see what ye'll get—a luik 'at wad fess a corbie (carrion crow) frae the lift (sky). I wadna hae ye try that. Some fowk's poverty maun be han'let jist like a sair place, doctor. He canna weel compleen o' a bit darnin'.—He canna tak that ill,' repeated Robert, in a tone that showed he yet felt ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... abounded in wild turkeys, as they said, of which they shot several, which furnished them with "delicious food." They must have been excessively hungry, or blessed with powerful imaginations, for, on cross-examination, these "wild turkeys" proved to be TURKEY BUZZARDS, or carrion vultures, most filthy creatures, which, in many places where the decay of animal matter is common, act faithfully the part of scavengers, and their flesh is strongly tinctured with ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... a Raven was flying over some reefs near the shore of the sea, he was seen by some Sea-birds that were perched on the rocks. They began to revile him, calling him disagreeable names: "Oh, you offal eater! Oh, you carrion eater! Oh, you black one!" until the Raven turned and flew away, crying, "Gnak, gnak, gnak! why do they call ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... a score or more of each cubic foot of material. Many of the species which develop underground come from eggs which have carefully been encased in organic matter before their deposition in the earth. Thus some of the carrion beetles are in the habit of laying their eggs in the bodies of dead birds or field mice, which they then bury to the depth of some inches in the earth. In this way nearly all the small birds and mammals of our woods disappear from view in a ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... ethical utterance, and is nowhere more evident than in his attitude towards animals. He would waste himself to a white-haired shadow to save a shark in an aquarium from inconvenience or to add any little comforts to the life of a carrion-crow. He would defy any laws or lose any friends to show mercy to the humblest beast or the most hidden bird. Yet I cannot recall in the whole of his works or in the whole of his conversation a single word of any tenderness or intimacy with any bird or beast. It was under the influence of this ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... never be enough of her victims left to come back for; and even if there had been, one short day's time in the hot, steaming jungle atmosphere sufficed to cause the flesh to decay. Suma had ideas of her own about spending the days away from her proper rendezvous; and as for carrion, she never failed to give ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... sun is thrown into darkness, or one eagle, blind and winged, falls down the rocks and leaves the whole nest to its conqueror. The Arrapahoes would not fight a cowardly Crow except for self-defence, for he smells of carrion; nor would ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... and storms to the Straits of Magellan. In the Inca language it was called cuntur, and was anciently an object of worship. The condor, gallinazo, turkey-buzzard, and caracara eagle (says Darwin) "in their habits well supply the place of our carrion crows, magpies, and ravens—a tribe of birds widely distributed over the rest of the world, but entirely absent in South America." The condor appears on the gold coins of New Granada and Chile. Of Trochilidae ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... came the soft crescendo of a hyena's howl some place off in the night. It was answered by another, miles away; then another, far off in a still different direction. The scent of the bait was spreading to the far horizon and the keen-scented carrion-eaters had caught it and were ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... God's dealing, as the hearer of prayer, with the practice of a judge who is manifestly vile and venal. Nor is a word of explanation or apology interposed. He who thus simply brings sweet food from noisome carrion, has all power in heaven and in earth; His ways are not as our ways, nor ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... comes like a woman, With lovely, smiling eyes, Black dreams float over his golden head Like a swarm of carrion flies. ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... benefit of our photographer," incurred the disgust which it deserved; but it was only one instance of an organised campaign of bruiting abroad invented stories of lawlessness in Ireland which constitutes the deliberate policy of the "carrion crows," whose action Mr. Birrell so justly reprobated, and of which the most flagrant instances were the purely fictitious plots to blow up the Exhibition in Dublin; an outrage at Drumdoe, which on investigation proved to be the work of residents in the house ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... found two new species of birds. The one is about the size of a pigeon, the plumage as white as milk. They feed along-shore, probably on shell-fish and carrion, for they have a very disagreeable smell. When we first saw these birds we thought they were the snow-peterel, but the moment they were in our possession the mistake was discovered; for they resemble them in nothing but size and colour. These are not ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after somewhat to eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe." In effect, happiness is a relative term, which we can alter as we please by altering the amount which we demand from life. "Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... kill these men as you wish, little one, would do nothing. Others of their kind would fill their places. The seekers of gold are like ants. Slay thousands, tens of thousands come on; if once the scent of gain be on the wind it brings men in crowds from all parts, as the smell of carrion brings meat-flies. If they think of seizing the Edera it is because men of business will turn it into gold. The Edera gives us our grain, our fruits, our health, our life; but if it will give money to the foreigner, the foreigner will take it as he would ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... bluebottle, on the contrary, which lays her eggs upon butcher's meat or carrion, lays them in enormous batches. Trusting in the inexhaustible riches represented by the corpse, she is prodigal of offspring, and takes no account of numbers. In other cases the provision is acquired by audacious ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... smelled so to any man alive as it smells to the broken-hearted. You know wounds will stink: but [there is] no stink like that of sin to the broken-hearted man. His own sins stink, and so doth the sins of all the world to him. Sin is like carrion; it is of a stinking nature; yea, it has the worst of smells; however, some men like it (Psa 38:5). But none are offended with the scent thereof but God and the broken-hearted sinner. 'My wounds stink, and are corrupt,' saith he, both in God's nostrils and mine own. But, alas! who smells the stink ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... lest my unworthy eyes should fail to behold the deliverance of that Holy Sepulchre whence my designation is taken. We will travel together, so will thy journey be safer, for these Turks hang like carrion upon the skirts of ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... vindicated the outraged law by transporting them for seven years. Other children committed larcenies that they might be sent to jail where there was still daily bread to be had. In Mayo the people were eating carrion wherever it could be procured, and the coroner could not keep pace with the inquests; for the law sometimes spent more to ascertain the cause of a pauper's death than would suffice ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... slay the defenceless, who commit brutal outrages upon the persons of women and children, deserve naught but death. Let them fight like men; we will slay them in fair fight, but we will give no quarter. We will, if God fights for us, sweep the carrion brood from off the very face ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... ransom demanded by Le Grand Diable. The "pig Sioux, more gluttonous than the wolverine, more treacherous than the mountain cat," had come out to receive them with hootings. The plunder was taken, "as a dead enemy is picked by carrion buzzards." He, himself, was dragged from his horse and bound like a slave squaw. La Robe Noire had been stripped naked, and young men began piercing his chest with lances, shouting, "Take that, man who would scalp the Iroquois! Take that, enemy to the Sioux! Take that, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Bald Eagle; "you and I are somewhat alike, for though I chiefly fish for a living I also kill the young of large animals, and even eat carrion when game is scarce. But as it is unusual for a judge to condemn himself, I think I must go free; and as there are not very many of either of us, it really ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... school, had now arrived at the dignity of clerk in a store, that thrived feebly on the scattering trade that filtered through and past Mr. Hard's larger establishment. He was one of the worst phases of the male gossip, and had the scent of a buzzard for the carrion of scandal. The Allens were now the uppermost theme of the village, for there seemed some mystery about them. Moreover, the rural dabblers in vice had a natural jealousy of the more accomplished rakes from the city, which took on something of the air of virtuous ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... tooting instrument in your jacket to the first fool you meet with, and buy some we'pon with the money, if it be only the barrel of a horseman's pistol. By industry and care, you might thus come to some prefarment; for by this time, I should think, your eyes would plainly tell you that a carrion crow is a better bird than a mocking-thresher. The one will, at least, remove foul sights from before the face of man, while the other is only good to brew disturbances in the woods, by cheating the ears of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... a sacrifice to the Lord, there came down on it swarms of birds of carrion (Gen. xv.) And when they did so, we are told that Abraham "drove them away." The chief Baker of Pharaoh had meats in a basket on his head, and the birds came down on them, and carried them off. "The birds did eat them out of the ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... it was consumed, it was discovered by a poor family (whose name and residence are given), and by them used as food. Father, mother and six children prolonged life for a week upon this disgusting carrion, and even regretted the loss of it, when the supply failed; and the poor mother said to the person who made the fact public, "the Lord only knows what I will now do for my starving children, since it is gone!" A ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... appeared in sight. We had marched a couple of miles farther, however, when we saw hovering in the air a number of birds, while others were flitting about the trees or perched on the boughs. As we drew nearer, we recognised among them numberless turkey buzzards, vultures, and other carrion fowl, while a pack of wolves were roaming about, disputing with the feathered ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... the carrion bird, and the fair woman Hurry upon a corpse, as if they think That all is left for them the grey gods ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... Coritanian, Trinobant! Must their ever-ravening eagle's beak and talon annihilate us? Tear the noble hear of Britain, leave it gorily quivering? Bark an answer, Britain's raven! bark and blacken innumerable, Blacken round the Roman carrion, make the carcase a skeleton, Kite and kestrel, wolf and wolfkin, from the wilderness, wallow in it, Till the face of Bel be brighten'd, Taranis be propitiated. Lo their colony half-defended! lo their colony, Camulodune! There the horde of Roman ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... way we passed, during the afternoon, a spot on the road where a flock of not less than fifty of those unclean birds, vultures, were hovering over and around the carcase of a recently dead bullock. These birds are the scavengers of this part of the world; they feed greedily on carrion, and rapidly pull a dead animal completely to pieces, leaving only the bones, which afterwards lie bleaching on the Veldt, to mark the spot where it has fallen in death—whether it be either horse, ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... make arrow-heads out of. I couldn't lift a hand, being held down, and being too weak besides. And—well, anyway, that stone knife did for her, and me they didn't even do the honour of killing there on top their sacred peak. They chucked me off of it like so much carrion. ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... has also been made that these giant carnivores were carrion-eaters rather than truly predaceous. The hypothesis can hardly be effectively supported nor attacked. It is ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... stag, if we must needs leave his carcase for the carrion crows? If 'tis practice with your bow you want, why, have we not that in abundance ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... be knocked insensible before the heathen finally mastered him. I believed the obstinate fellow dead, so ghastly white appeared his usually florid face as the victorious savages dragged him roughly past where I lay, flinging his heavy body down like carrion upon the rocks. De Noyan appeared badly cut, his gallant clothing clinging to him in fluttering rags, silent witnesses to the manliness of his struggle. Yet the ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... pass, and the blue Flies cannot come at it. Query. Is it not strange, that we see daily the Limbs of Horses hung up in Trees, and they do not stink, but remain good a long while fit for Dogs Meat? If any one will say, that Dogs all delight to eat Carrion, I must deny that; but that every sort of Dog will roll himself in Carrion, when he can find it, ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... up before there is any stench at all. But, when the meat, now two days old and ripened by the sun, exhales its flavor, soon the master ghouls appear upon the scene: Dermestes [bacon beetles, small flesh-eating beetles] and Saprini [exceedingly small flesh-eating beetles], Silphae [carrion beetles] and Necrophori [burying beetles], flies and Staphylini [rove beetles], who attack the corpse, consume it and reduce it almost to nothing. With the ant alone, who each time carries off a ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... His lady's fame and interest too, Who made each heart with joy rebound, Yet never ran her state aground, 180 Was turn'd off, or (which word I find Is more in modern use) resign'd.[138] Half-starved, half-starving others, bred In beggary, with carrion fed, Detested, and detesting all, Made up of avarice and gall, Boasting great thrift, yet wasting more Than ever steward did before, Succeeded one, who, to engage The praise of an exhausted age, 190 Assumed a name of high degree, And call'd himself Economy. ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... looked up at him, and her eyes were black with hate. "Well, I do, Paul. I would like to kill one man on earth—a useless, vicious weakling, too feeble to deserve a fine death—a rotting carrion spoiling God's world and encumbering my path! I would kill him if I could—and more than ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... Yon island carrion,] This description of the English is founded on the melancholy account given by our historians of Henry's army, immediately ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... dear JOE? Nay, it needs no apology To say you are out in your new ornithology. The Vultures are carrion-birds, be it said; And the Man and the Cause you detest are not dead! Much as his decease was desired, he's alive, And the Cause is no carcase. So, JOE, you must strive To get nearer the truth. Shall we help you? All fowls Are not Vultures. For instance, dear JOE, there are Owls, (Like JESSE) ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... to the tower of the Castle, from which a beam protruded, laden at that moment with a ghastly burden just discernible in the thickening gloom. He named it well when he called it his "flagstaff," and the miserable banner of carrion that hung from it was a fitting pennon for the ruthless Governor of Cesena. Worthy was he to have worn the silver hauberk of Werner von Urslingen with its motto, "The enemy of God, ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... the common vulture where there is carrion. In passing up the river there was an opportunity of seeing a pair of the king of the vultures; they were sitting on the naked branch of a tree, with about a dozen of the common ones with them. A tiger had killed a goat the day before; he had been driven away in the act ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... old carrion-buzzard, Bussey, up at the muzzle of The Patriot as if it were a blunderbuss. It was loaded to kill, too. And then," pursued Edmonds, "he paid the price. Marrineal got out his little ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... prophets, the other has slain a hundred thousand followers of the Gospel. Both have killed, in order to obtain the goods of their victims. But the unkindest verses are the last—even the very dogs will refuse to touch Catharine's "carrion." ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... mungaroos, muckishaws, ingwas, otees, and musteran-de-ovas. Of the palmberries, physick-nuts, mendibees, etc. and their roots and herbs, etc. Of their wildfowl, macaws, parrots, etc. The yemma, carrion-crow and chattering-crow, bill-bird, curreso, turtledove and wild pigeons; the jenetee, clocking-hen, crab-catcher, galden, and black heron: the ducks, widgeon and teal; and ostriches to the southward, and ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... wide-eyed at this gaunt object, and she saw not Christ on the Cross but the spectre of Sancho Mendez falling off into darkness. Percival's gaze followed hers, and his heart smote him,—for it was he who had demanded that the gruesome reminder be left standing as a warning to carrion. And he had laughed when Peter Snipe christened it ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... cried Mr. Jeremiah: 'Now, may the sweetest of all thunderbolts——But, rascal, this instant what's to pay? then take thy carrion out of the stable, and be off.' So saying, Mr. Schnackenberger strode to the bed for ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... or three squirrels, one of which is the small one of Upper Assam, Trocheloideus, the lesser Edolius or Drongo minor. Mainas, two kinds, carrion crows, Bucco, Muscipeta flammea, and one or two other species, Parus, two or three species, kites, large tailor-birds, sparrows. The black-bird of the torrents, and the usual water-birds, black pheasants; bulbuls very common, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... To-morrow I shall pay for it as the drunkard pays. And I shall know that I must die, at sea most likely, cease crawling of myself to be all a-crawl with the corruption of the sea; to be fed upon, to be carrion, to yield up all the strength and movement of my muscles that it may become strength and movement in fin and scale and the guts of fishes. Bah! And bah! again. The champagne is already flat. The sparkle and bubble has gone out and ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... I ask," replied the other, looking very suspiciously at Vanslyperken, "what can you want with this piece of carrion?" ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... deposit brought down by the river in the spring, and, when the river retired into its banks, became a series of mud flats, described as "mere quagmires of black dirt, stretching along for miles, unvaried except by the limbs of half-buried carrion, tree trunks, or by occasional yellow pools of what the children called frog's spawn; all together steaming up vapors redolent of the savor of death." In the previous year—not an unusually bad one—one-ninth of the Indian population on these flats had died in two months. The Mormons suffered ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... God." Q "What is the Faith of Al-Islam?" "The professing that there is no god but the God and that Mohammed is the apostle of God." Q "What is thy first and thy last?" "My first is man's seed in the shape of foul water and my last filthy carrion: the first of me is dust and the last of me is dust. Quoth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... he had not fed, for no longer was his charge as swift or his spring as mighty as in the days of his prime when he spread terror among the creatures of his wild domain. For two nights and days he had gone empty, and for long time before that he had fed only upon carrion. He was old; but he was yet a terrible engine ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the old city and the mountains and the wild country. I may not be a patriot like Nicholas of Reist, but the old war music seems to leap and burn in my blood when I think of the Turks creeping nearer and nearer to the frontier, and our ancient city full of foreign spies, gathered together like carrion birds before ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... pair of paps that showed like two manure-baskets and a face like a cadger's, all sweaty, greasy and smoky, leaving Fra Cipolla's chamber and all his gear to care for themselves, swooped down upon the kitchen, even as the vulture swoopeth upon carrion, and seating himself by the fire, for all it was August, entered into discourse with the wench in question, whose name was Nuta, telling her that he was by rights a gentleman and had more than nine millions of florins, beside that which he ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of misunderstanding about the meetings, arising from garbled newspaper reports. The newspaper reporter has a bias for things off colour—buzzard-like, he sees only the carrion—at least he is trained to report only the carrion—this always against his will. So we were kept explaining to men and women of the church who had not been able to attend and see for themselves. There was not only misunderstanding but prejudice. I came ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... no doubt right in considering the lucubrations of the poet Baudelaire, and his necrophile imagination of his own carrion hung on a gibbet and devoured by vultures, as a mixture of sadism and masochism. He sought out the most repulsive women of all races, Chinese, negresses, dwarfs, giants, or modern women as artificial as possible, to satisfy his pathological instinct. The ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... grace of what I purpose; And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn, To have the due and forfeit of my bond: If you deny it, let the danger light Upon your charter, and your city's freedom. You'll ask me, why I rather choose to have A weight of carrion flesh, than to receive Three thousand ducats: I'll not answer that: But, say, it is my humour:[100] Is it answer'd? What if my house be troubled with a rat, And I be pleas'd to give ten thousand ducats To have it ban'd? What, are you answer'd yet? Some men there are love ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... w—!" vociferated the actor beside himself; and seizing a bottle by the neck raised it high over his head. "Hold me, or else I'll brain this carrion. Don't you dare besmirch with your ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... not be left for the carrion crow, Or the wolf to batten o'er thee: Or the coward insult the gallant dead, Who in life had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... Nicobar islands, which have fresh-water lakes and streams. They are of two kinds, the black kayman, and the proper crocodile. The latter is said never to attack live creatures, but to devour only carrion, and is therefore not considered dangerous. Of the correctness of this opinion I had once ocular proof. I was walking at Queda along the coast, and looking at a number of children swimming and sporting in the water. ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel |
