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More "Plumage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which he held to the height of a stature apparently greater than it was, and tilted from side to side in his undulating walk. He glimmered at you from the narrow slits of fine blue-greenish eyes, under branching brows, which with age grew more and more like a sort of plumage, and he was apt to smile into your face with a subtle but amiable perception, and yet with a sort of remote absence; you were all there for him, but he was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the parrots, but not all of them imitated the human talk, chattering and making harsh sounds after their own fashion and making the glades bright with their gorgeous plumage. ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... drying in the pen. The oriels tantalized me, because I could always hear them in the crests of the trees, until, about the middle of August, they went away on their long journey to the South, but could very rarely catch sight of their gold and black plumage. Although they will draw near to gardens to steal fruit when they have eaten the wild cherries, they are among the most suspicious ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the Loon family, being twenty-five inches in length. In plumage it is wholly unlike any of the other members at all seasons of the year. In summer the back, head and neck are gray, the latter being striped with white. A large chestnut patch adorns the front of the lower part of the neck. In winter the back is spotted ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... a starling," I said. "Can't you see its nice shiny black-and-green plumage, and its yellow bill like a blackbird? Leave the poor little thing ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... for surely that ashen-gray suit is the superlative of plainness; and that form, likewise, would hardly pass for a "perfect figure" of a bird. The seasonableness of her coming, however, and her civil, neighborly ways, shall make up for all deficiencies in song and plumage. After a few weeks phoebe is seldom seen, except as she darts from her moss-covered nest beneath some bridge or ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... was to be seen under the sun it was impossible to prove by comparison that they were wrong. You can't compare birds and fishes; you could only feel that, as Greville Fane's characters had the fine plumage of the former species, human beings must ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... keen eyes turned toward the sea, blue and stainless, as level as the long looking glass in his mother's parlor at home. Several sea gulls skimmed the quiet waters, now rising until their gray-white plumage melted into the clouds, now seeming to float upon the tide. Uriah was a trifle sorry when they disappeared at last, for he loved the sea gulls dearly. They seemed so akin to him in their wild freedom, in their love for the solitary waste of waters. ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... bosom, and inspire Through all her veins with unsuspected sleight The poisoned sting of passion and desire." Young Love obeys, and doffs his plumage light, And, like Iulus, trips forth with delight. She o'er Ascanius rains a soft repose, And gently bears him to Idalia's height, Where breathing marjoram around him throws Sweet shade, and odorous flowers his slumbering ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... suburban home he had caught rats and captured on the sly many an English sparrow. When he first investigated his new quarters on the farm, he discovered a beautiful flock of very large birds led by one of truly gorgeous plumage. ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... fire, and whence there rushes forth an immense number of every kind of animal, with several human figures. This terrific, yet truly beautiful representation, was all the more highly esteemed for the time that had been expended on it in the plumage of the birds, and other minutiae in the delineation of the different animals, and in the diversity of the branches and leaves of the various trees seen therein;" and thenceforward the catastrophe is direct, to the ornithological ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... plumage gay, With many an amorous dame, Fierce strutted o'er the way; And motley ducks Were waddling seen, And drake with ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... are not entirely safe. Their mother may protect them from rain and cold; from winged enemies and creeping serpents, but she cannot defend them against the attacks of boys and men. An oriole's nest is such a curious structure, and the birds are known to be of such fine form and gorgeous plumage, that many boys cannot resist the temptation of climbing up after them and, if there are young ones within, of carrying the whole affair away in order to try and "raise" the young birds. Sometimes the nest is put in a cage, where ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... gentleman; and although he seldom indulged in similes or allusions, when he did so they were apt and correct. This was due to his perfect sanity of mind, and to his aversion to all display or to any attempt to shine in borrowed plumage. He never undertook to speak or write on any subject, or to make any reference, which he did not understand. He was a lover of books, collected a library, and read always as much as his crowded life would permit. When he was at Newburgh, ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Ninety-six tables were ranged in eight rows. In front of them, on a large platform covered with velvet, with a canopy in the middle, was a table larger than the rest, and loaded with fruit and flowers, to say nothing of the roast hares, and the peacocks smoking beneath their plumage. At this table the bridal pair were to have been seated in full sight, in order that nothing might be lacking to the pleasures of the feast, and that the meanest peasant might have the honor of saluting them by emptying his cup of hydromel to ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... them as they stood irresolute; he bowed courteously, and no more thought of asking them to join him than though they had been birds of brilliant plumage flying by. Dr. Dennis passed them; he said good-morning, not gladly, not even graciously; he dreaded those girls, and their undoubted influence. They had not the least idea how much mischief they had done him in the way of frittering away his influence ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... hue, its deep violet tints being subdued in the paling afternoon light. All the tones in the picture are uniform and subdued, but none can be fairer, more harmonious, no spectacle more impressive, than the delicate sea-green foliage of myriads of olive-trees—plumage were the apter word—one unbroken sheeny wave from end to ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... stately and beautiful, her features were striking and regular, though they could not be called pre-eminently beautiful, whilst her complexion was fair and elegantly transparent. Her hair, which was as dark in color as the plumage of the raven, as it clustered in short, rich, silken curls over her small white neck, gave conclusive evidence, when combined to a pair of large, languishing black eyes, that she was not born beneath the ruddy influence of England's cold and vacillating climate. And such was the fact, ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... and beyond, of a grove of noble palms, sheltering the house of the trader, Mr. Keane. Overhead, the cocos join in a continuous and lofty roof; blackbirds are heard lustily singing; the island cock springs his jubilant rattle and airs his golden plumage; cow-bells sound far and near in the grove; and when you sit in the broad verandah, lulled by this symphony, you may say to yourself, if you are able: 'Better fifty years of Europe . . .' Farther on, the floor of the valley is flat and green, and dotted here ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... landscape gardening; but the elaborately arranged paths, beds, and parterres, with their white statues and fountains, lost their effectiveness closed in as they were by high walls of vine-covered brick. It was rumored that once a stately peacock had here once flaunted his gorgeous plumage, giving his name to the inn itself—but this legend ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... its own home, it has in addition to its own beauties the charm of harmony with all that surrounds it," observes Mrs Agassiz,—"with the dense mass of forest, with palm and parasite, with birds of glowing plumage, with insects of all bright and wonderful tints, and with fishes which, though hid in the water beneath it, are not less brilliant and varied than the world ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... structure is common to the coral and the plumage of birds, and to how large a part of animate and inanimate nature. The same independence of law on matter is observable in many other instances, as in the natural rhymes, when some animal form, color, or odor, has its counterpart ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... strange beyond thought; here lie dense groves and tangled thickets where bloom great flowers of unearthly beauty yet rank of smell and poisonous to the touch; here are birds of every kind and hue and far beyond this poor pen to describe by reason of the beauty and brilliancy of their plumage, some of which would warble so sweet 'twas great joy to hear while the discordant croakings and shrill clamours of others might scarce be endured. Here, too, are trees (like the cocos) so beneficent to yield a man food and drink, aye, and ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... she said nothing and forced a smile, he could easily tell by the set of her lips that Deborah thoroughly disapproved. All right, that was her way, he thought. But this was Laura's way, shedding the gloom and the tragic side as a duck will shed water off its back, a duck with bright new plumage fresh from the shops of the Rue de la Paix and taking some pleasure out of life! What an ardent gleaming beauty she was, he thought as he watched this daughter of his. And underneath his enjoyment, too, though Roger would not have admitted it, was a sense of relief in the ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... statement. 'Though I shall never care to figure before peeresses,' he said. 'I can't tell you why. There's a heavy sprinkling of the old bird among them. It isn't that. There's too much plumage; I think it must be that. A cloud of millinery shoots me off a mile from a woman. In my opinion, witches are the only ones for wearing jewels without chilling the feminine atmosphere about them. Fellows think differently.' Lord Palmet waved a hand expressive of purely amiable ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stared, he slowly realized that the mystery of the rare "black eagle" was explained. He had seen one once, flying heavily just above the tree-tops, and imagined it a discovery of his own. But now he reached the just conclusion that it had been merely a youngster in its first plumage. ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... that bordered the walls of Babylon far into the country, soon echoed with the shouts of the attendants beating the coverts for game, the baying of the dogs, the hiss of lances and whir of arrows. Bright-hued birds, roused by the tumult, flew wildly hither and thither, now and then the superb plumage of a bird of paradise flashing like a jewel among the dense ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... civilized men. Here and there groups of trees appeared, in small groves, as if planted by the exquisite taste of a landscape gardener. Herds of buffaloes, antelopes, and deer, grazed the herbage in countless numbers. Birds of every variety of song and plumage found here their paradise. And in these fair realms the children of Adam might have experienced joys hardly surpassed by those of their first parents in Eden, were it not for that inhumanity of man to man which has caused countless millions to mourn. ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... had at last met a man who appeared to wear his errors of dress as naturally as he wore his errors of opinion. The fuzzy brown stuff, the green tie with red spots, the striped shirt—was it blue or purple?—all became as much a part of Gideon Vetch as the storm-ruffled plumage was part of an eagle. If the misguided man had attired himself in a toga, he would have carried the Mantle without dignity perhaps, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... groves where he had won His plumage of resplendent hue, His native fruits, and skies, and ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... for some hours in silence with his long, thin back curved over a chemical vessel in which he was brewing a particularly malodorous product. His head was sunk upon his breast, and he looked from my point of view like a strange, lank bird, with dull gray plumage and ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... feet, and also those internal organs of the body, of which I may leave it to the physicians to explain the exceeding usefulness; but others with no view to utility, but for ornament as it were, as the tail is given to the peacock, plumage of many colours to the dove, breasts and a beard to man. Perhaps you will say this is but a dry enumeration; for these things are, as it were, the first elements of nature, which cannot well have any richness of language employed upon them; nor ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... there was voluntary. Nor did he live alone. Lover of Nature though he was, and addicted to the chase, another kind of love found its way to his heart, making himself a captive. The dark eyes of a Paraguayan girl penetrated his breast, seeming brighter to him than the plumage of the gaudiest birds, or the wings ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... the hammer for you," said Loki. So he put on the falcon plumage, and, spreading his brown wings, flapped away up, up, over the world, down, down, across the great ocean which lies beyond all things that men know. And he came to the dark country where there was no sunshine ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... fowling-piece in his hand. Suddenly he brought it to his shoulder and fired. All eyes were directed to the shore, and a large bird was seen to drop upon the ground. The captain started the boat, and ran her up to the bank. Clinch leaped ashore, and soon brought the bird on board. Its plumage was ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... Montague was staggered at the idea of a two-hundred-thousand-dollar fur coat; and yet not long afterward there arrived in the city a titled Englishwoman, who owned a coat worth a million dollars, which hard-headed insurance companies had insured for half a million. It was made of the soft plumage of rare Hawaiian birds, and had taken twenty years to make; each feather was crescent-shaped, and there were wonderful designs in crimson and gold and black. Every day in the casual conversation of your acquaintances you heard of similar incredible things; a ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... blue chatterers swept from tree to tree, or atrogon swooped at a falling bunch of fruit and caught it ere it reached the water; while ungainly toucans plumped clumsily down upon the branches, and sat, in striking contrast, beside the lovely pompadours, with their claret-coloured plumage and delicate ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... deep wicker chair and breathed in the glory and the freshness of the scene. Across the broad river, right ahead of the boat, a flock of parroquets was flying, screeching their raucous chorus. The sun caught their brilliant plumage, and she saw, as it seemed, ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... placed; that carriers, and fantails, and croppers, are produced by early caging, and minutely attending to the common blue pigeon, flights of which cover the ploughed fields in distant provinces of England, and shew the rich and changeable plumage of their fine neck to the summer sun; so from the warm and generous Briton of ancient days may be produced, and happily bred down, the clay-cold coxcomb of ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... call should come to return. With them, the red-breasted meadowlarks of the pampas sang and frolicked as if constituting themselves a welcoming committee to the strangers during their annual visit. Their gaudy plumage contrasted strongly with the sombre, spotted ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... a party of students returning to the University of Kazan. They exhibited all degrees of shabbiness, but this was only the modest plumage of the nightingale, apparently. For hours they sang songs, all beautiful, all strange to us, and we listened entranced until tea, cigarettes, and songs came to an end in time to permit them a few hours ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... cannot boast Of a plumage so gay, But more piercing and clear is her eye; And while you are strutting About all the day, She gallantly ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... yet, except a few eider ducks, and one or two ice-birds—the most graceful winged creatures I have ever seen, with immensely long pinions, and plumage of spotless white. Although enormous seals from time to time used to lift their wise, grave faces above the water, with the dignity of sea-gods, none of us had any very great inclination to slay such rational human-looking creatures, and—with the exception of these and a white fish, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... instant with bright suspicious eyes, flung himself into the air and hovered over a nearby eddy with an irregular flapping of quick, blue wings. Then, like a bullet, he dived into the flashing stream immediately at Clark's feet, and emerged with diamond drops flying from his brilliant plumage and a small, silver fish curving in his sharp, serrated beak, till, a second later, he darted into the covert with his prey. The bird had dared the rapids and found that which he sought. Clark's gray eyes had seen it all, ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... of thee when Morning springs From sleep with plumage bathed in dew; And like a young bird lifts her wings Of gladness on the welkin blue. And when at noon the breath of love O'er flower and stream is wandering free, And sent in music from the grove— I think ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... remember, she had suffered nothing beyond the indignities of the days of October at Versailles. But did not the protracted agonies of a nation deserve the tribute of a tear? As Paine asked, were men to weep over the plumage, and forget the dying bird? The bulk of the people must labour, Burke told them, "to obtain what by labour can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavour, they must be ...
— Burke • John Morley
... up toward a firmament of somber green, from which descended dense festoons of vines. Through this twilight flitted birds of brilliant plumage and long-haired monkeys. The place had a morose, nefarious beauty, like the forest in the ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... sit upon my finger, and eat his sugar and water out of a teaspoon with most Christian-like decorum. He has but one weakness—he will occasionally jump into the spoon and sit in his sugar and water, and then appear to wonder where it goes to. His plumage is in rather a drabbled state, owing to these performances. I have sketched him as he sat to-day on a bit of Spiraea which I brought in for him. When absorbed in reflection, he sits with his bill straight up in the air, as I have drawn ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... word of what was said. All at once there began the most horrid, unearthly screaming, which at first startled me badly, though I had soon remembered the voice of Captain Flint and even thought I could make out the bird by her bright plumage as she sat ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all the Irish writers of his time. He had an amazingly powerful mind. At Trinity College he took prizes in Hebrew and in Irish, and at the same time gained a scholarship in harmony and counterpoint at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. As a boy, "he knew the note and plumage of every bird, and when and where they were to be found." As a man, he could easily have mastered the note of every human being, as in addition to his knowledge of ancient languages, he seems to have become proficient in German, French, and Italian with singular ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... sex, commence. New buds and bulbs the living fibre shoots On lengthening branches, and protruding roots; Or on the father's side from bursting glands The adhering young its nascent form expands; In branching lines the parent-trunk adorns, And parts ere long like plumage, hairs, or ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... season was over, and that he was rejoicing in the fulness of a sleeky plumage, and by his side was a Java sparrowess, chirping and hopping about, rendering the cage as populous to him as though he were the tenant of a bird-fancier's shop. Then—he awoke just as Old John was finishing a glass of Madeira, preparatory to arousing Collumpsion, for the purpose of delivering to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... fern its fragrant plumage droops O'er mosses, crisp and gray, Where on the shaded crags I sit, Beside the cataract's spray, And watch the far-off, shining sails Go down ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... leader, went so far as to compare him to a bird with fine feathers and no song, and to suggest that perhaps the bird might have sung if the inducement offered had been more substantial. A singer of Mr. Taggett's plumage was not to be taught by such chaff as five hundred dollars. Having killed his man, the editor proceeded to remark that he would suspend judgment ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... least consoled by Nicholas, that "It 'id be black dark when they reached the house, and the devil a one 'id be the wiser than if she came in a coach and four." Nicholas was right; it was perfectly dark on their arrival at Callonby, and Miss O'Dowd having dismounted, and shook her plumage, a little crumpled by her half-recumbent position for eight miles, appeared in the drawing-room, to receive the most courteous attentions from Lady Callonby, and from his lordship the most flattering speeches for her kindness in risking herself and bringing her horses on such a dreadful road, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... gliding along the barbed wire fence, the Baltimore oriole, always a charming fellow because of his flaming plumage, which has won for him the name of the golden robin and firebird. He walks along the wire fence in a gliding, one-leg-at-a-time fashion, as he often does on the twig of a tree. His head is down, he is on the lookout for caterpillars. Now he reaches the tick-trefoil, and ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... the general's uniform. Everything was there complete, from top to toe, and everything was of the very best quality—richest gold lace, glittering epaulettes, stripes and bands that dazzled the eye, buttons and chains of splendor indescribable, hat with gorgeous plumage, sword of magnificent decoration, attached to a belt that a king might choose to wear. All these delighted the soul of Russell, but not least of all the cloth, whose softness and exquisite fineness appealed to his professional feelings, and caused his ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... besides these, there were ranges of salas and tamalas and patalas and vakula trees, like unto garlands put on by the summits of the mountain. Thus gradually beholding on the slopes of the mountain many lakes, looking transparent like crystal, and having swans of white plumage and resounding with cries of cranes, and filled with lotuses and lilies, and furnished with waters of delicious feel; and also beholding fragrant flowers, and luscious fruits, and romantic lakes, and captivating trees, the Pandavas penetrated into the forest with eyes expanded with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... caught up by other writers, especially by Isaac D'Israeli, who seems to have thought charges brought, as Mr. Bolton Corney showed, on the flimsiest evidence, of an impudent assumption of false literary plumage, in no way inconsistent with fervid admiration ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... put up ptarmigans, that flew away with the curious "brek-kek-kex" that is their rallying cry, showing white spots on their dull-hued plumage, which would soon grow into the pure, snowy livery of winter days. A few snipe flew up from the side of water-holes, with shrill cries and twisting flights. Far away on the marsh we saw a flock of geese, pasturing like so many sheep, while one of their number played ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... pouch. So they leave them and hurry away, that they may not hear their cry. They know they shall meet them again later on, when they are grown big. Then as Mayrah softly blows, the flowers one by one open, and the bees come out again to gather honey. Every bird wears his gayest plumage and sings his sweetest song to attract a mate, and in pairs they go to build their nests. And still Mayrah softly blows until the land is one of plenty; then Yhi the sun chases her back whence she came, and the flowers ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... looped with giant cables and burdened with flowering orchids or half hidden beneath other parasites. On every hand a vegetable warfare was in progress—a struggle for existence in which the strong overbore the weak—and every trunk was distorted by the scars of the battle. Birds of bright plumage flashed in the glades, giant five-foot lizards scuttled away into the marshes or stared down from the overhanging branches. A vivid odor of growing, blooming herbage ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... to the top of the tree, and sit trimming my feathers, spreading them out and trying to make the most of their scanty appearance, till my patience was rewarded; for beyond a doubt, at the end of the fifth month my plumage was something wonderful to behold for beauty. As for my head being large, it now helped to show off the splendid yellow crest; and the awkward look was quite gone. Still my temper hadn't improved; indeed I think ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... morality as strong as a law of God. I made at one time the fatal mistake of the many simple labourers who are organically honest. I spent most of my best life in seeking a solution of our hard lot from those above me. After a loss of many feathers and some brave plumage, but no down, I must in all humility beat my way back to the traditional lost ideals of our organically incorporated class.... Perhaps the most conscienceless class who seek to solve the insoluble is the 'cultured' ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... ye, Mistress Elliott," said she, and hostility and gentility were nicely mingled in her tones. "A fine day, mem," the laird's wife would reply with a miraculous curtsey, spreading the while her plumage—setting off, in other words, and with arts unknown to the mere man, the pattern of her India shawl. Behind her, the whole Cauldstaneslap contingent marched in closer order, and with an indescribable air of being in the presence of the foe; and while Dandie saluted ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for those swards of grass, and green meadows, with which almost the whole aspect of his own climate is verdant. He might find one plant stately enough to shade him from the torrid sun, and to harbour among its boughs many a tropical bird with its bright metallic plumage; but he could not find a lea covered with lowing herds, or with bleating flocks, on the soft sward of which he could lie down, and listen to the lark that sings to him from heaven, sending down its clear notes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... moment imagine the scene. Not the moment of struggle, but the pause that succeeds. The angels of good have triumphed, and though the plumage of their wings may droop, they are white and dazzling so as no "fuller of earth could whiten them." The moonlight of peace rests upon the battle field, where evil passions lie wounded and trampled under feet. Strains of victorious music float in the air; ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... towered one grand design in fountain form, from which came sprays of perfumed water, hiding the sultry sky and falling back with musical rhythm into the many-coloured marble basin. Slaves with fans of gorgeous plumage wafted the perfumed air into the ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... poet's instruments were words which varied in every land. He took the Platonic view of poetry as a lying imitation, removed from truth. He called the poet a collector of other men's wares, who decked himself in their plumage. Where poetry presented only a shadow to the imagination, painting offered a real image to the eye; and the eye, as the window of the soul through which all earthly beauty was revealed, the sight, he exclaimed, ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... eggs, a cock and a hen, which lived just seven years, and did the same. This has continued to this day, and pilgrims receive feathers from these birds as holy relics; but no matter how many feathers are given away, the plumage of the sacred fowls is ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... followed the golden bird] So Sir Percival travelled that path for some distance as the lady had advised him to do, and by and by he beheld the bird of which she had spoken. And he saw that the plumage of the bird glistered as though it was of gold so that he marvelled at it. And as he drew nigh the bird flew a little distance down the path and then lit upon the ground and he followed it. And when he had come nigh to it again it flew a distance farther and still he ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... other. The approach of the soldiers did not appear to cause these lively creatures any appreciable fear, for they often remained seated directly over their heads and regarded the unaccustomed military display with as much inquisitiveness as they evidently did with delight. Parrots in gay plumage filled the air with shrill cries, while here and there herds of antelopes were visible, who, however, always dashed away in rapid flight, in which their strange manner of springing from all fours in the air afforded a ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... by the atmosphere of peace suggested by their bearing and presence; and the gentle, sheltered, contemplative lives lived by most of them undoubtedly made them unusually responsive to spiritual influence. Now, the young birds have left the parent nest and the sober plumage and soft speech; they are as other men; and in a few short years the word Quaker will sound as strange in our ears as the ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... little success, catching only a few mullets, neither did we get any thing by the trawl or the dredge, except a few shells; but we shot several birds, most of them resembling sea-pies, except that they had black plumage, and red bills and feet. While we were absent with our guns, the people who staid by the boats saw two of the Indians quarrel and fight: They began the battle with their lances, but some old men interposed and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... another the Chase of the Wild Boar, which gained him the greatest applause. There are many of his best works in the Dusseldorf Gallery. He painted all kinds of birds and fowls in an inimitable manner; the soft down of the duck, the glossy plumage of the pigeon, the splendor of the peacock, the magnificent spread of an inanimate swan producing a flood of light, and serving as a contrast to all the objects around it, are so attractive that it is impossible to contemplate one of his pictures of these subjects without feeling ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... vivid blue, as the object at which he was gazing moved sharply, turning a small head on a long neck. It was a peacock. But he had thought of a thousand things before he thought of the obvious thing. The burning blue of the plumage on the neck had reminded him of blue fire, and blue fire had reminded him of some dark fantasy about blue devils, before he had fully realised even that it was a peacock he was staring at. And the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... pleasing and bell-like. What a furtive, woody sound it is in the winter stillness, so unlike the harsh scream of the hawk! But all the ways of the owl are ways of softness and duskiness. His wings are shod with silence, his plumage is edged ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... have said that we have a game-preserve. We keep quails, or try to, in the thickly wooded, bushed, and brushed ravine. This bird is a great favorite with us, dead or alive, on account of its tasteful plumage, its tender flesh, its domestic virtues, and its pleasant piping. Besides, although I appreciate toads and cows, and all that sort of thing, I like to have a game-preserve more in the English style. And we did. For in July, while ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... day the scenery changed. In place of the mangroves a dense forest lined the river. Birds of lovely plumage occasionally flew across it, and after they had anchored in the evening, the air became full of strange noises; great beasts rose and snorted near the banks; sounds of roaring and growling were heard in the wood; and the lads, who had been so eager before to take part in a hunt on shore, listened ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... Swan, is a bird of golden plumage, who has been swimming for the last four years in the auditor's pond at 5000 dollars a year. I am for rotation. I want to rotate him out, and to rotate myself in. There's a plenty of room for him to swim outside of that pond; therefore pop in your votes for me—I'll pop ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... equipped for their last adventure with mysterious darns and patches, cheated the eye like a painted beauty at a ball. Women's finery lay in disordered heaps—silk blouses covered with tawdry lace, skirts heavy with gaudy trimming—the draggled plumage of fine birds that had come to grief. But here buyer and seller met on level terms, for each knew to a hair the value of the sorry garments; and they chaffered with crafty eyes, each searching for the silent thought behind the ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... were as numerous as the stews. A treatise of the fourteenth century names about thirty, beginning with a sirloin of beef, which must have been one of the most common, and ending with a swan, which appeared on table in full plumage. This last was the triumph of cookery, inasmuch as it presented this magnificent bird to the eyes of the astonished guests just as if he were living and swimming. His beak was gilt, his body silvered, resting 'on a mass of brown pastry, painted green ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... summer of the year. The foliage was bright and the air crisp and cool. Although a child, the impression made upon me was one that I have gone over in my mind many times, and I can see every inch of the road, the kind people, the beautiful scenery, birds of bright plumage, and rabbits darting across the road at the sound of our wheels. It was late when the journey was ended, but we were made welcome and comfortable by more pleasant faces and willing hands. The parsonage was ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... where the long, white tables were laid beneath the apple boughs. And as they moved, a bluebird, swinging far above them in the sunlight, caroled forth a joyous marriage hymn. And down below, the little blue silk gown, of the same shade as his dazzling plumage, covered a ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... last day of your conflict, Is the last day of your fasting. You will conquer and o'ercome me; Make a bed for me to lie in, Where the rain may fall upon me, Where the sun may come and warm me; Strip these garments, green and yellow, Strip this nodding plumage from me, Lay me in the earth, and make it Soft and loose and ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... there was a smouldering in the nest; a heap of embers enveloped in smoke lay before the Tufters; in a moment the smoke parted and out of the embers soared with crimson and golden plumage the new Phoenix! ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... closed by a plug of down rammed into it by the shot. The Fly takes up her position without separating the feathers or uncovering the wound. She remains here for two hours without stirring, motionless, with her abdomen concealed beneath the plumage. My eager curiosity does not distract her from ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... ornithologist to pass up the river. A hundred times a day flocks of small paroquets fly screaming over our heads and settle behind the trees. Large, green, blue, and scarlet parrots, the araras, fly in pairs, uttering penetrating, harsh cries, and sometimes an egret with her precious snow-white plumage would keep just ahead of us with graceful wing-motion, until she chose a spot to alight among the low bushes close to ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... such gorgeous plumage. Many a man in the Rue des Catonnes would cheerfully risk his life for the value of your gold braid. But," glancing at the blood on his ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... curious fact that, while the plumage of the parrots' breasts is always gaudy and brilliant in the extreme, that of their backs is usually the colour of the general tone of the region they inhabit. In woods, where the bark of trees is chiefly bright yellow and green, ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... motionless, and then the yellow hen shook her wings to settle the feathers and walked toward the door with a strut of proud defiance and a cluck of victory, while the speckled rooster limped away to the group of other chickens, trailing his crumpled plumage in ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... does not argue. At first it is seen far off, like a beautiful bird of rare plumage, among flowers, on a morning in spring; it comes nearer, it is timid, it advances, it recedes, it poises on swiftly beating wings, it soars out of sight, but suddenly it is nearer than before; it changes shapes, and grows vast and terrible, till its flight is like the rushing of the whirlwind; ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... intended for parrots and song birds. The treatment is always highly conventional, yet in many cases the characteristic features of the species are forcibly presented. The painted devices have reference in most cases to the markings of the plumage, yet they partake of the geometric character of the designs used in ordinary vase painting. The ground is the usual yellowish gray of the slip, and nearly all the pieces belong to the ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... and breeding, and that ended it,—at least so nearly ended it that Cram's diplomatic invitation to come up and try some Veuve Clicquot, extra dry, upon the merits of which he desired the colonel's opinion, had settled it for good and all. Braxton's officers who ventured to suggest that he trim the plumage of these popinjays only got snubbed, therefore, for the time being, and ordered to buy the infantry full dress forthwith, and Cram and his quartette continued to blaze forth in gilded panoply until long after Sam Waring led ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... ptarmigan, which is either a variety of grouse or grouse in its winter plumage, and black game, when roasted, are cooked in precisely the same manner ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... ferns glided up the tall, smooth trunks, mingling with the boughs, and hanging in every direction waving curtains of flowers, of the sweetest odours and the most vivid colours. With shrill twittering cry and rapid wings flashed the humming-bird from bough to bough; the pepper-pecker, with glowing plumage, soared timorously upwards; while parrots and paroquets, and innumerable birds of beautiful appearance, added, by their cries and motions, to the ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... on satisfactorily, and I began to count the hours, by day as well as by night, until the great day was to arrive on which the arrogant pride of the Parliament was to receive a check, and the false plumage which adorned the bastards was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... up, he took from his pocket Diana's letter, and read it again, passing his hand now and then nervously through his hair, until it stood up like the ruffled plumage of an eagle. ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... glossy than the plumage of a raven, a thick, rough, gray rope was visible, twisted and knotted, chafing her delicate collar-bones and twining round the charming neck of the poor girl, like an earthworm round a flower. Beneath that rope glittered a tiny amulet ornamented with bits of green glass, which had been left ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... from the crisp-smiling waves, in a rich atmosphere of light and beauty—there Leda toyed with the wreathed neck and ruffled plumage of the enamoured swan—in this compartment, Danae lay warm and languid, impotent to resist the blended power of the God's passion and his gold—in that, Ariadne clung delighted to the bosom of the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... use of this last word—the same little mirthless laugh that she had uttered before—Jacqueline went away, followed by the admiring glances of the other girls, who from behind the bars of their cage noted the brilliant plumage of this bird who was at liberty. She crossed the courtyard, and, followed by Modeste, entered the chapel, where she sank upon her knees. The mystic half-light of the place, tinged purple by its passage ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... an end. Each principality, each nome, each city, almost every village, conceived and represented them differently. Some said that the sky was the Great Horus, Haroeris, the sparrow-hawk of mottled plumage which hovers in highest air, and whose gaze embraces the whole field of creation. Owing to a punning assonance between his name and the word horu, which designates the human countenance, the two senses were combined, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... some repairs required by the ship. For our part, having erected a tent near the springs, we passed the time while they were taking in water, in coursing over the isles: we had a boat for our accommodation, and killed every day a great many wild geese and ducks. These birds differ in plumage from those which are seen in Canada. We also killed a great many seals. These animals ordinarily keep upon the rocks. We also saw several foxes of the species called Virginia fox: they were shy and yet fierce, barking like dogs and then flying precipitately. Penguins are also numerous ...
— 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
... must allow a less interrupted stretch of it in the Comus: in this poem there may be something, which might have been corrected by the revising judgment of its author; but its errors in thought and language, are so few and trivial that they must be regarded as the inequality of the plumage, and not the depression or unsteadiness of the wing. The most splendid results of Shakspeare's poetry are still separated by some interposing defect; but the poetry of Comus may be contemplated as a series of gems strung on ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... possible alleviation suggested in the pages of De Quincey, which lay near me, I threw myself back on the bed with the old resolution to fight it out. Almost immediately an animal like a weasel in shape, but with the neck of a crane and covered with brilliant plumage, appeared to spring from my breast to the floor. A venerable Dutch market-woman, of whom I had been in the habit of purchasing celery, seemed to intervene between me and the animal, begging me not to look at it, and covering ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... For one more moment I was uncertain; I wondered if my gun could have gone off in my hands just as I was leaving Edmee. I distinctly remembered firing it at a pewit an hour before, for Edmee had wanted to examine the bird's plumage. Further, when I heard the shot which had hit her, my gun was in my hands, and I had not thrown it down until a few seconds later, so it could not have been this weapon which had gone off on falling. Besides, even granting a fatality which was incredible, I was much too far ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... that her strong inclination to sit down was owing to want of exercise, and the heaviness of her eyelids a freak of imagination; so, speedily smoothing her ruffled plumage, she ran down to tell her father of the ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... spidery hands of ice upon the walls and rafters of the byre. Fowls, silver-spangled and black, scratched at the earth from habit, fought for the daily grain with a ferocity the summer never saw, stalked spiritless in puffed plumage about the farmyard and collected with subdued clucking upon their roosts in a barn above the farmyard carts as soon as the sun had dipped behind the hills. Ducks complained vocally, and as they slipped on the glassy pond they quacked ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... beetling barn-eaves; and there were the martins, morning gossips from time immemorial, chattering at the doors of their white pagodas, with their bright red roofs and black thresholds. The old England robin, with its plumage of gorgeous scarlet, dashed with jet, swung in its airy nest, suspended from the topmost boughs of the tall elms, and the blue and yellow birds fluttered with warbling throats among the lilac's now flowerless but verdant boughs. Helen hardly ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... midday when the sun is fierce, all are still: let, however, a good shower fall, and all burst forth at once into merry lays and loving courtship. The early mornings and the cool evenings are their favorite times for singing. There are comparatively few with gaudy plumage, being totally unlike, in this respect, the birds of the Brazils. The majority have decidedly a sober dress, though collectors, having generally selected the gaudiest as the most valuable, have conveyed the idea that the birds of the tropics ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... nothing about this young man," said Miss Winthrop, ruffling her plumage somewhat for an argument, of which she was fond; "but, as a case in hand, suppose a highly educated and refined man for some reason swept a store out every morning, what would you call him?" and she looked around as if she had ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... advanced, its entire breadth, however, not being discernible from the boat. Vegetation became more luxuriant, and was on a larger scale; the bushes resounded with the songs of birds, echoing clearly across the transparent water. Splendid was the white plumage of the osprey, shining in the midst of the dark-green foliage; nor less so that of the little white heron, standing with melancholy aspect on the prostrate tree-trunks. On an overhanging branch, defined against the ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... the dove's satiny plumage gently—and then drew back a little into shadow as she saw Robin Clifford step out from the porch into the garden and hurriedly interrupt the advance of a woman who just then pushed open the outer gate—a slatternly- looking creature with dark dishevelled hair and a face which ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... The plumage of this species is remarkable. A rich brown pervades the crown of the head, the ear-coverts and the throat, each feather being bordered by a narrow black line; and, on the crown, the feathers are small and tipped with ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... excellent. They are joyous, rapturous, sprightly, dancing, and filled with references to sky, clouds, trees, fruit, grain, birds and flowers. Birds and flowers, by the way, are peculiarly lovers' properties. The song and the plumage of birds, and the color and perfume of flowers are all distinctly sex manifestations. Robert Burns sang his songs just as the bird wings and sings, and for the same reason. Sex holds first place in the thought of Nature; and sex in the minds of men and women holds a much larger place than ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... last day I went bee-hunting. As I was laboring up the side of a mountain at the head of a valley, the noble bird sprang from the top of a dry tree above me and came sailing directly over my head. I saw him bend his eye down upon me, and I could hear the low hum of his plumage, as if the web of every quill in his great wings vibrated in his strong, level flight. I watched him as long as my eye could hold him. When he was fairly clear of the mountain he began that sweeping spiral movement in which he climbs the sky. ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... with an air of flying humiliation as a flag of defiance, while she stood holding the packet in both hands, when the door was pushed open, and Evie, radiant from her walk in the cold air and fine in autumn furs and plumage, fluttered in. Her blue eyes opened wide on the two in the bay-window, but she did not advance from ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... of Heaven—Buddha's—is perfect gold. Its gardens and palaces are adorned with gems. They are encircled with rows of trees, and borders of net-work. There are lovely birds, of sparkling plumage and exquisite notes. The great god O-lo-han; the goddess of Mercy; the unnumbered Buddhas; the host of demigods, and the sages of heaven and earth, will all be assembled on that sacred spot. But in that sacred kingdom there are no women; ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... biological signification of these phenomena. Most feathers stick together and remain so even after being dried; if they then are waved through the air, the barbs of the feather separate, owing to differences of electrification. No bird needs to attend to its plumage at the end of a long flight, for while the large feathers are positively electrified by friction against the air, the white down has become negative, and so there is attraction between it and the feathers. Another consequence of this production of electricity during flight is that during winds, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... a visit from Mr. Pennington, a merchant of Philadelphia, who was likewise a member of the Society of Friends. The visitor, on entering the parlor, was surprised to see it ornamented with drawings of Indian chiefs, and of birds with beautiful plumage, and of the wild flowers of the forest. Nothing of the kind was ever seen before in the ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that they were falling rapidly. Already they grew larger to the eye. Presently the heron disengaged himself and flapped heavily away, the worse for that deadly embrace, while the peregrine, shaking her plumage, ringed once more so as to get high above the quarry and deal it a second and more fatal blow. The Bishop smiled, for nothing, as it seemed, could ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Cambridge he encountered a friend, a bluff man of science, who was engaged in a singular investigation. He kept a large variety of fowls, and tried experiments in cross-breeding, noting carefully in a register the plumage and physical characteristics of the chickens. He had hired for the purpose a pleasant house, with a few paddocks attached, where he kept his poultry. He invited Hugh to come in, who in his leisurely mood gladly assented. ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... striving about she could not exactly tell, but she felt that the conflict had some relation to herself. The dove at first appeared to have but a poor chance against the claws of its sable adversary, but the sharp talons of the latter made no impression upon the white plumage of the bird, which now shone like silver armour, and in the end the cat fled, yelling as it darted off—"Thou art victorious now, but her soul shall ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Island of Cuba is a joy, and Havana is like Heaven, until you come to pay your bill, when it is hell. Streets so wide you cannot see a creditor on the other side, pavements as smooth as the road to perdition, and tropical trees, plants and flowers, with birds of rare plumage, you feel like sitting on a cold bench in the shade, and wishing all your friends were here to enjoy a taste of what will come to those who are truly good, in the hereafter, when suddenly you are taken with a chill up the spinal ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... the shape of a bird fits it for moving rapidly in the air, and all parts of its body are arranged so as to give it lightness along with strength. The soft and delicate plumage of birds protects them from cold or moisture; their wings, though so delicate, are furnished with muscles of such power as to strike the air with great force, whilst their tails act like the rudder of a ship, so that they can direct ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... extremity of the lists, large as it was, was now completely crowded with knights desirous to prove their skill against the challengers, and, when viewed from the galleries, presented the appearance of a sea of waving plumage, intermixed with glistening helmets and tall lances, to the extremities of which were, in many cases, attached small pennons of about a span's breadth, which, fluttering in the air as the breeze caught them, joined with the restless motion of the feathers ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... remained were cousins, and all were of the same brilliant plumage and in size about as large as eagles. When Trot questioned them she found they were quite young, having only abandoned their nests a few weeks before. They were strong young birds, with clear, brave eyes, and the little girl decided they were the most beautiful of all the feathered creatures ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the ux to be covered with greenish plumage; Wallace was too far away to observe the color of the great birds; but all the natives of Tasmania unite in affirming that the plumage ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... embraced. The herbage had put on a deeper verdure, and the wild flowers of summer sent forth a richer fragrance on the fresh and balmy air. The moistened foliage of the trees displayed a thousand varying hues; and, among their branches, innumerable birds sported their brilliant plumage, and warbled their melodious notes, as if rejoicing in ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... While I lie and long? I see their soft plumage And catch their windy song, Like the rise of a high tide Sweeping full and strong; I mark the ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... a wall or tree out of the reach of cats. I have reserved a stook of bunches of blackberries by inserting their stems in water, grape-fashion, for a succession of food for bait. I have also caught scores, if not hundreds, on bird-lime, but this injures their plumage and is somewhat troublesome, especially to anyone not accustomed to handle it. I have also caught them in a bat fowling net at night out of thick hedges. I find a trap cage or cages best, for bullfinches generally go in small parties, and I have ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... And I do believe they would eat from her hand things unnatural to them, lest she should be grieved and hurt by not knowing what to do for them. One of them was a noble bird, such as I never had seen before, of very fine bright plumage, and larger than a missel-thrush. He was the hardest of all to please: and yet he tried to do his best. I have heard since then, from a man who knows all about birds, and beasts, and fishes, that he must have been a Norwegian bird, called in this ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... to her new home a collection of rare birds in such numbers that the room over the kitchen was devoted to the cages of cockatoos, parakeets, parrots and nonpareils. Here these feathered friends in spectrum-hued plumage lived among the potted plants and charmed the little bride with their beauty and sweet tricks. Other appendages included a chimpanzee, and a small Chinese slave boy, bought by her father from one of the innumerable ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... whose huge trunks, springing from a dense mass of undergrowth, rise 200 feet or more into the air. All are bound together by a tangled mass of creepers, which mingle their foliage with that of the trees to form one huge canopy of leaves, in which birds of bright plumage and beautiful song live out their happy lives. Monkeys also make their home there, and strange insects and butterflies of rare beauty flit among the flowers, or hover in the few stray sunbeams ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... through without falter or fail? Why the Hawk 'twas again, and great Indra to men would appear, now and then, in the shape of a Quail, While the Thlinkeet's delight is the Bird of the Night, the beak and the bright ebon plumage of Yehl.{8} And who for man's need brought the famed Suttung's mead? why 'tis told in the creed of the Sagamen strong, 'Twas the Eagle god who brought the drink from the blue, and gave mortals the brew that's the fountain of ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... superintend the preparations for dinner. At four o'clock the sportsmen returned, bringing red-crested woodpeckers, finches of various hues, humming-birds, black and yellow pies, and others of gay plumage and delicate shape, quite new to us all. A merrier party certainly never met, but the best of the expedition was to come. The tide was now favourable; and we determined to do a spirited thing, and instead of going all the ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... now about noon. The rain the night before had given fresh tints to the green of grass and foliage. The whole earth, indifferent to the puny millions that struggled on its vast bosom, seemed refreshed and revitalized. A modest little bird in brown plumage perched on a bough near them, and, indifferent too, to war, poured forth a brilliant volume ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... length the lagging days were numbered, That bound me to a foreign shore, And glorious hopes that long had slumbered Again their gilded plumage wore; Fond voices in my ear were singing The songs I loved in boyhood's day, As in my hammoc slowly swinging I ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... honorable desire! The love of pretty clothes,—however it may seem to be motivated and however it may be complicated by other motives,-draws its energy, fundamentally, from the same need that provides the gay plumage and limpid song of the bird or the painted ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... up and saw the bird, one of those pretty little parrots with soft, silky, dull-green plumage. It was hanging by the beak from a bar of its cage, swinging itself and flapping its wings, all ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... (Anas boschas).—The mallard is splendid in plumage, and in shape is far more graceful than his domesticated brother. In early winter the wild ducks fly overhead in a wedge-shaped phalanx, and by and by they pair, and if disturbed start up with a sudden quack, quack from the copse-wood pond. Broods of downy ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... stretching on into infinite space, in spectral procession that knew neither beginning nor end. And in all the solemn crowd passing perpetually with the same unceasing motion, there was no sound of human footfall, no tramp of horse's hoof, only that dismal waving of black plumage in an icy wind, and the deep boom of a ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... who changed his semblance, when from a male he became a female, his members all of them being transformed; and afterwards was obliged to strike once more the two entwined serpents with his rod, ere he could regain his masculine plumage. Aruns[2] is he that to this one's belly has his back, who on the mountains of Luni (where grubs the Carrarese who dwells beneath), amid white marbles, had a cave for his abode, whence for looking at the stars and the sea his view was not ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... country over which they had wandered. Near them was a grove of oleander bushes, loaded with beautiful blossoms. Every branch was adorned by the presence of two or more beautiful green sugar-birds,—the certhia (Nectarinia) famosa. Nothing in nature can exceed in splendour the plumage of the sugar-bird. The little vale in which the hunters had encamped seemed a paradise, bathed in golden sunlight; and even the cattle appeared to leave it ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... fluttering its wings and other demonstrations of delight. The Jay has also been seen playing with two kittens, while the old cat looked composedly on at their gambols. This bird is in beautiful plumage, and is about twenty years of age. She is well known to the residents of Blackheath and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... they carved delicately with chisels. Some of the silver vases were so large that a man could not encircle them with his arms. But the art in which they most delighted was the wonderful feather-work. With the gorgeous plumage of the tropical birds they could produce all the effect of a beautiful mosaic. The feathers, pasted upon a fine cotton web, were wrought into dresses for the wealthy, hangings for their palaces, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... had eaten all the berries, the young birds began to pick the decayed feathers off the old bird and to smooth his plumage. As soon as they had completed their task, he rose slowly from the hill and sailed out over the lake, and dropping down on the waters dived beneath them. In a moment he came to the surface, and shot up into the air with a joyous ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... of sharp stones; and many other articles which I cannot enumerate. In the palace there was a magnificent aviary, containing every kind of bird to be found in all the surrounding country, from large eagles down to the smallest paroquets of beautiful plumage. In this place the ornamental feather-work so much in repute among the Mexicans, was fabricated, the feathers for this purpose being taken from certain birds called Quetzales, and others, having green, red, white, yellow, and blue feathers, about the size of our Spanish pyes, the name of which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... personal inward sanitation. Smokers, drinkers, coffee-tipplers, gluttonous eaters, diners-out, are likely to lose the sense of perfect health, of a clear, pure life-current, of which I am thinking. The dew on the grass, the bloom on the grape, the sheen on the plumage, are suggestions of the health that is within the reach of most ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... or Phrygium. Passing or metal thread work. Opus Pulvinarium. Shrine or cushion work. Opus Plumarium. Plumage or feather work. Opus Consutum. Cut work. Opus Araneum or Filatorium. Net or lace work. Opus Pectineum. Tapestry ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... attire. "The motley coloured garments he wore at the close of the previous Session were exchanged for a suit of black unapproachably perfect." Also "he appeared to have doffed the vanity of the coxcomb with the plumage of the peacock." Evidently he felt that his carefully-designed sartorial extravagances had played their appointed part in attracting notice. In manner of speech as in fashion of clothing he assumed ways more compatible with the position of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... to live patriots, avoiding ceremonies and performing sacrifices for your country. And above all, live as good christians, and not as fluttering butterflies, who attract only with the gay color of their plumage while they live and die soon to be forgotten. And as to the nation itself, why, may the devil get me, (and I'm no friend of his,) if I don't think all that is needed to render it safe, is just to let ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... concealed were the fawns that drew it by the floating mists that went before it in pomp. But the mists hid not the lovely countenance of the infant girl that sate wistful upon the ear, and hid not the birds of tropic plumage with which she played. Face to face she rode forward to meet us, and baby laughter in her eyes saluted the ruin that approached. 'Oh, baby,' I said in anguish, 'must we that carry tidings of great joy to every people be God's messengers of ruin to thee?' In horror I rose ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... men shoot the mother bird on their nests while they are rearing their young, because their plumage is prettiest at that time. The little ones cry pitifully, and starve to death. Every bird of the rarer kinds that is killed, such as humming birds, orioles and kingfishers, means the death of several others that is, the young that starve to death, the wounded that fly away ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... It is the proof that always thou carriest on high and free, thy coat of arms. In the language, a mystery, an old treasure is found. Each year the nightingale puts on new plumage, ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... about his neck, and large earrings in his ears, behind one of which a red rose was stuck jauntily enough among the glossy black curls; on his head was a broad velvet Spanish hat, in which instead of a feather was fastened with a great gold clasp a whole Quezal bird, whose gorgeous plumage of fretted golden green shone like one entire precious stone. As he finished his speech, he took off the said hat, and looking at ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... in a deep wicker chair and breathed in the glory and the freshness of the scene. Across the broad river, right ahead of the boat, a flock of parroquets was flying, screeching their raucous chorus. The sun caught their brilliant plumage, and she saw, as it seemed, a ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... rambling in the mountains. In these excursions, which, although exceedingly interesting, were solitary, for I never could persuade anyone to accompany me, I always took a gun, making the ostensible object of my rambles the shooting of RAMEES birds of the pigeon species, of beautiful plumage, nearly as large as a barnyard fowl, and of delicate flavor. These birds inhabited the deepest recesses of the woods, and, although ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Against HER suffered to have lost a field. Herself must with herself be sole compeer, Unless the people of her distant sphere Some gold migration send to melodise the year. But first our hearts must burn in larger guise, To reformate the uncharitable skies, And so the deathless plumage to acclimatise: Since this, their sole congener in our clime, Droops her sad, ruffled thoughts ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... taken to Hawaii by a prophet whose canoe had been drawn to its landing-place by the shark god and the god of the winds. In darkness he entered the inner chamber of the temple. An unknown voice, speaking from the holy of holies, bade him send his people to the woods next day for plumage of birds, with which to decorate the statue, when he should get it, and thereby atone for the neglect and contempt of the gods that had done so much to bring him into ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... perfume the air with their fragrance; whilst birds of endless variety and richest plumage have their nests in the tall and wide-spreading trees of varied-coloured foliage and fill the air with their music. In the trees are placed artificial nests to entice the birds; these invite others, which build their nests spontaneously. The trees are ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... official status, appeared in full gala dress, according to their respective ranks. In the garden, the curtains were, by this time, flapping like dragons, the portieres flying about like phoenixes with variegated plumage. Gold and silver glistened with splendour. Pearls and precious gems shed out their brilliant lustre. The tripod censers burnt the Pai-ho incense. In the vases were placed evergreens. Silence and stillness prevailed, and not a man ventured so much ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Doctor. "Her of the plumage—her! Shure, she's not livin' in this wurruld. She's only visitin' it. She's got no responsibility. If iver there was a child of a fairy tale, that wumman's the child. I belave she'd think her son was doin' right if he tied the ould fella up to a tree ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the clear blue of the heavens as they looked, and all about them rose the sounds of awakening nature. Away back in the woods they could hear the chattering of monkeys; parrots and birds of bright plumage screamed and sang and fluttered among the trees near the beach; and several bright-plumaged flamingoes stalked gravely about the shallows, seeking their morning ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... favorite occupation in Germany and the fondness for the cruel work was not left behind by the emigrants. More's the pity. These fellows fairly swarm with their bird limes and traps among the suburbs, having an eye only to the birds of brightest plumage and sweetest song. "They use one of the innocents as a bait to lure the others to a prison." "Two of the trappers," says one who watched them, "took their station at the edge of an open field, skirted by a growth of willows. Each ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... told of his lying on his back in the woods with some moss for his pillow and looking through a telescopic microscope day after day, to watch a pair of little birds while they made their nest. Their peculiar gray plumage harmonized with the color of the bark of the tree, so that it 5 was impossible to see the birds except by the most careful observation. After three weeks of such patient labor, he felt that he had been amply rewarded for the toil and sacrifice by the results ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... my moccasins rubbed and chafed at every step. The girl had sat her saddle while the horse swam, so that her legs only were wet. As for the Oneida, his oiled and painted skin shed water like the plumage of a duck. Lord knows, we left a trail broad and wet enough for even a Hessian to follow; and for that reason dared not halt north of Frenchman's Creek or short of ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... distant sapphire mountains, while the foreground was occupied by a magnificent house, resembling a large country villa, fronted with a garden, shaded by bowers and festoons of huge, brilliant flowers. Birds of radiant plumage flitted among the trees and blossoms, and then appeared a company of gayly attired people, including many young girls, who joined hands and danced in a ring, apparently with shouts of laughter, while a group of musicians ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... broad stairs with wide landings to the "peacock chamber," he seems to himself always to be going over a temple of sweet and sacred recollections. Into the peacock chamber, therefore, his soul may wander, where the walls are sparsely decked with black-and-white sketches, ill displaying the glorious plumage of the bird, and, like all old pictures, very brown,—even to the four-posted bed, whitely dressed, and heaped to a height that would defy "the true princess" to feel a pea through it, and the white toilet-table, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... part, having erected a tent near the springs, we passed the time while they were taking in water, in coursing over the isles: we had a boat for our accommodation, and killed every day a great many wild geese and ducks. These birds differ in plumage from those which are seen in Canada. We also killed a great many seals. These animals ordinarily keep upon the rocks. We also saw several foxes of the species called Virginia fox: they were shy and yet fierce, barking like dogs and then flying precipitately. Penguins are also numerous ...
— 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
... prenilo—eto. Plod on diligentigxi. Plot konspiri, intrigi. Plot (league) intrigo, konspiro. Plot (of land) terpeco. Plough plugi. Plough plugilo. Ploughshare plugfero. Pluck (fowl) plumtiregi, senplumigi. Pluck (courage) kuragxo. Plug sxtopilego. Plum pruno. Plumage plumaro, plumajxo. Plumbago grafito. Plumber plumbisto. Plume plumfasko. Plummet sondilo. Plump dika. Plumpness dikeco. Plunder rabadi. Plunge subakvigxi. Plural multenombro. Plush plusxo. Poach cxasosxteli. Poach (eggs, etc.) boleti. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... later the little Prince of Wales was garlanded with Tom's fluttering odds and ends, and the little Prince of Pauperdom was tricked out in the gaudy plumage of royalty. The two went and stood side by side before a great mirror, and lo, a miracle: there did not seem to have been any change made! They stared at each other, then at the glass, then at each other again. At last the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and climes men had worn figured silks and satins and brocades, had worn long gowns and lace-trimmed sleeves, jeweled bonnets and curls, but now the male had surrendered to the female his prehistoric right to the fanciful plumage. These war days were grown so austere that it began to seem wrong even for women to dress with much more than a masculine sobriety. But the occasion of this ball had removed ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Molothrus (M. pecoris), which has a similar cuckoo-like habit, and which is most closely allied in every respect to the species from the Plata, even in such trifling peculiarities as standing on the backs of cattle; it differs only in being a little smaller, and in its plumage and eggs being of a slightly different shade of colour. This close agreement in structure and habits, in representative species coming from opposite quarters of a great continent, always strikes one as interesting, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... wheel flat on a tree-top, the storks accept this, as an invitation to come and stay. At once they proceed, first of all, to arrange their toilet, after their long flight. They do this, even before they build their nest. You can see them, by the hour, preening their feathers and combing their plumage, with their long bills. Then, as solemnly as a boss mason, they set about gathering sticks and hay for their house. They never seem to be ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... all ages and all climes; your Mother Brownriggs; your Lucretia Borgias, Salomes—I could weary you with names. Your Roman task-mistresses; your drivers of lodging-house slaveys; your ladies who whipped their pages to death in the Middle Ages; your modern dames of fashion, decked with the plumage of the tortured grove. There have been other women also—noble women, their names like beacon-lights studding the dark waste of history. So there have been noble men—saints, martyrs, heroes. The sex-line divides us physically, not morally. Woman has been ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... partridge, although far from numerous, is quite common, and a bag of three or four would represent a good day's work. These birds resemble the red-legged variety so common in England, but are considerably larger, while the plumage, although practically identical in colour, is far more brilliant. A curious feature about them is that they are never flushed in coveys and very rarely in pairs, but are almost invariably single birds, which fact, together with their large size and gorgeous ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... as the sun was setting with unusual brilliancy, a flock of large, beautiful birds rose from out of the brushwood. The Duckling had never seen anything so beautiful before; their plumage was of a dazzling white, and they had long, slender necks. They were Swans. They uttered a singular cry, spread out their long splendid wings, and flew away from these cold regions to warmer countries, across the open sea. They flew so high, ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... was one vastly strange and most unlovely!" After this we went on side by side and never a word betwixt us until we had reached that pleasant champain country where flowed the river shaded by goodly trees, in whose branches fluttered birds of a plumage marvellously coloured and diverse, and beneath which bloomed flowers as vivid; insomuch that my lady brake forth ever and anon into little soft cries of delighted wonder. And yet despite all these marvels it was long ere we ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... covered with the lotus of fable and poetry, resembling huge pond-lilies; we behold brilliant flowers growing in tall trees, and others, very sweet and lowly, blooming beneath our feet. Vivid colors flash before our eyes, caused by the blue, yellow, and scarlet plumage of the feathered tribe. Parrots and paroquets are seen in hundreds. Storks, ibises, and herons fly lazily over the lagoons, and the gorgeous peacock is seen in his wild condition. The elephant is also a native here, and occasionally ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... carried away by the flood of melody, sang. His voice displayed itself like a peacock's plumage, and died in spasms of "ohs" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... white dove. What they were striving about she could not exactly tell, but she felt that the conflict had some relation to herself. The dove at first appeared to have but a poor chance against the claws of its sable adversary, but the sharp talons of the latter made no impression upon the white plumage of the bird, which now shone like silver armour, and in the end the cat fled, yelling as it darted off—"Thou art victorious now, but her soul shall ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... bower-bird than you, sir; a new species. His eyes are red instead of blue, and the whole plumage is lighter. I will call it after you, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... halted on the brink of the kloof. Little birds of gay and brilliant plumage, blue and crimson and emerald-green, rose in flocks from the bush and grasses that clothed the sides of the coomb; the hollows were full of the tree-fern; the grass had little white and purple flowers in it. At the valley-bottom a little ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... eggs, and nests. But the shells, minerals, and fossils, form so extraordinary and numerous a collection that they are the subject of admiration of every beholder; the polish of the shells, the brilliance of the colours of the plumage of the birds, and the glossy smoothness of the skins of the beasts are as perfect as if they were living, but the same cannot exactly be said of the fishes. The marbles, porphyry, and granite, the lava, basaltes, barks of trees, bones of animals known and unknown, some within stones, are ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... discovered near the hives, and forthwith he is executed as a bee-eater. "He ought to be killed for his looks, if nothing else!" He is thus often sacrificed really on account of his appearance, while pretending he is a villain. It is true his "feathers" will not vie in brilliancy with the plumage of the humming-bird, and do not gratify ideality—therefore he is dispatched. The next week the complaint is made that the little bugs, that he might have destroyed, "have eaten up all the little cucumbers ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... sleepy peacocks stand, too indolent to unfurl their gorgeous plumage, looking in their quiet like statues placed at intervals between the stone vases of scarlet geraniums and drooping ferns that go to ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... gravely, "that your change of dress betokens the neighbourhood of those pretty girls of whom you spoke in an earlier meeting. According to the Darwinian doctrine of selection, fine plumage goes far in deciding the preference of Jenny Wren and her sex, only we are told that fine-feathered birds are very seldom songsters as well. It is rather unfair to rivals when you unite ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... downward to the base. Preceded by the lion Tarzan descended into the valley, which, at this point, was forested with large trees. Before him the trail wound onward toward the center of the valley. Raucous-voiced birds of brilliant plumage screamed among the branches while innumerable monkeys ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... vast hall, there were a few preparations, exemplifying the leading structural peculiarities and the mode of development of a common fowl; if the types of the genera, the leading modifications in the skeleton, in the plumage at various ages, in the mode of nidification, and the like, among birds, were displayed; and if the other specimens were put away in a place where the men of science, to whom they are alone useful, could have free access to them, I can ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... believed in that manuscript much more than the author did. That is the correct attitude for a successful agent. Imogene did not "push" the book, as salesmen say, so much as herald it. She entered publishers' offices like a prophetess or one of the seraphim, panoplied in shining plumage, blinding the poor human eyes with beams of heavenly radiance, the marvellous manuscript, like a roll of lost gospels, held out before her. She blew a blast on her trumpet and the doors of the publishers' readers swung wide. No ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... still, golden times of November, full of dreamy rest and tender calm. The skies above were blue and fair, and the waters of the curving bay were a downward sky—a magical under-world, wherein the crimson oaks, and the dusk plumage of the pine, and the red holly-berries, and yellow sassafras leaves, all flickered and glinted in wavering bands of color as soft winds swayed ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... came wheeling back; the ship spread her huge white plumage, and went proudly off to sea, the blue waves breaking white ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... snake-like heads from side to side in search of a tempting pebble or trifle of hardware. Their wings are slightly raised, and the long fringe of white feathers rustles softly as they trot easily and gracefully past us. They are young male birds, and in a few months more their plumage, which now resembles that of a turkey-cock, will be jet black, except the wing-feathers. A few drops of rain are falling, so we hurry back to where the carriage is standing under some splendid oak trees, swallow a sort of stirrup-cup of delicious hot tea, and so home ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... and received his stories about Italy with "Oh! ah! indeed!" in a very unkind manner. And when breakfast was over, and she had done washing her age chins, she fluttered up to Clive with such an agitation of plumage, redness of craw, and anger of manner, as a maternal hen shows if she has reason to think you menace her chickens. She fluttered up to Clive, I say, and cried out, "Not in this house, Clive,—not in this house, I ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rocking-chairs, or perhaps peering coyly through the half-closed jalousies, their eyes invariably dark brown or coal black, the marble forehead above surmounted with a chevelure in hue resembling the plumage of the raven. For most of these demoiselles are descended from the old colonists of the two Latinic races; not a few with some admixture of African, or Indian. The flaxen hair, blue eyes, and blonde complexion of the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... exquisite little drawings of ecclesiastical utensils, etc., but the everlasting variety among the quaint and fanciful initials provides an unwearying fund of interest. Tiny birds of the loveliest plumage sit among and beneath the limbs of the letters, or elegant scrolls of pencilled gold cover the little coloured panels on which the plain gold Roman initials are placed. Some of the larger initials are very finely executed and contain ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... might I not ask ev'n the same of you, The nodding helmets of whose men-at-arms Out-crest the plumage of your ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... exclaimed that it was an accident, and that the gentleman might fire one hundred times again without bringing down another bird, but not one of them thought to ask the name of the gentleman who had fired the shot, for the ladies gathered around to examine the beautiful plumage of the gull. ...
— Fred Fearnot's New Ranch - and How He and Terry Managed It • Hal Standish
... beheld a bird of medium size, and of plain plumage. It cocked its little head to one side, and eyed the child as if it knew no fear. It ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... hours for making merry. A select party of three or four perch on the bushes which skirt a small grassy plain, and cheer themselves with the music of their own quiet and self-complacent song. A playful performance on the wind succeeds. Expanding his soft velvet-like plumage, one glides with quivering pinions to the centre of the open space, singing as he flies, then turns with a rapid whirring sound from his wings—somewhat like a child's rattle—and returns to his place again. One by one the others perform the same feat, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... warning, however, the Peers gave a Second Reading to the measure and also to the Coal Mines Emergency Bill, which is less up-to-date than it sounds, and deals not with the present emergency but with the last emergency but one. They also passed the Importation of Plumage Bill, at the instance of Lord ABERDEEN, who pleaded that beautiful birds, "the result of myriads of years of evolution," should not be exterminated to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... pillar, the curtains covering a door leading into an inner apartment were set aside, and La Valentinois entered, bearing on her left shoulder a large green parrot, whose plumage she caressed with her right hand. She was clad in a loose robe of some soft, clinging material that shimmered like cloth of gold. It was fastened at her throat by a jewelled star, and a golden zone clasped her waist. Her abundant hair hung loose in black, curling masses, and her little feet ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... Tododaho was watching over him, and, as long as he tried to live the right way taught to him by his fathers, the great Onondaga chieftain would lead him through all perils, even as the bird in brilliant blue plumage had shown Robert the path from the pursuit of Tandakora. The sublime faith of Tayoga ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... enough legitimately belonging to them for any nation to be justly proud of, without plucking peacock's feathers from others, and sending them throughout the length and breadth of the Republic as the plumage of the American eagle. How many useful inventions have they not made in machinery for working wood? Is not England daily importing some new improvement therein from the American shores? Look again at their perfect and beautiful invention for the manufacture of seamless bags, by Mr. Cyrus Baldwin, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... strip of forehead, her short upper lip and small chin, rounded but resolute, completed a piquant and striking figure. The rich brown shadows on the smoke-stained walls and ceiling, the occasional starting into relief of the scutcheons of brilliant plumage, and the momentary glitter of the steel barrels, made a quaint background to this charming picture. Sitting there, and following some lingering memory of her tramp on the Marsh, she hummed to herself a few notes of the bugle call that had impressed her—at first softly, and finally with the full ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... plentiful. My collection comprises more than one hundred species of land birds, many of them remarkable for beauty of plumage, and peculiarity of form, structure, and habit. Among them the most remarkable are the great black macaw, ('Microglossus Atterrimus') the magnificent rifle bird, ('Ptiloris Magnifica') and the rare and beautiful wood kingfisher, ('Tan Ts-ptera Sylvia'). The ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... the whistle blew Joel was at left half-back on the scrub, attired in borrowed plumage that came far from fitting him. And Mrs. March was in a tremor of dismay lest some one should throw Joel down as she had seen Blair thrown. Mr. March had not quite recovered from his resentment over his ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... little river there were other things when the leaves grew brown. In those low, easy hills strange creatures dwelt. Birds of brown plumage and wondrous, soul-startling burst of wing. Large gray creatures, a foot long or longer, with light tread on the leaves, and long ears that went a-peak when you whistled to them. Were ever such beings before in any ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... heavy and cheap-sweet as the face of the woman who had saturated her handkerchief with it, a scent which went with her perfectly and made her unhappily definite; suited to her clumsily dyed hair, to her soiled white shoes, to the hot red hat smothered in plumage, to the restless stub-fingered hands, to the fat, plated rings, of which she wore a great quantity, though, surprisingly enough, the large diamonds in her ears were pure, and ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... country possess in many instances an excessively beautiful plumage; and he alone who has traversed these wild and romantic regions, who has beheld a flock of many-coloured parakeets sweeping like a moving rainbow through the air whilst the rocks and dells resounded with their playful cries, can form any adequate idea of the scenes that there burst on the ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... their plumage wear their bright, beautiful dress during the summer. Not so with Mr. Mallard. He wears his holiday clothes during the winter. In the summer he ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... the folds of her travelling dress with both hands, as if the dove had taken a fancy to smooth its plumage. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... followed his directions, and with ever growing interest they saw the rows and rows of stuffed birds, of all sizes and of all varieties of plumage. ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... and they got en route again, the road winding through woods golden in the setting sun. Occasionally a raccoon, playing about the trunks of trees, beguiled the loneliness of the way; or a strange bird, with harsh note, but gay plumage, flashed across their track. Colonel Rolleston, however, was not so much entranced as his children at discovering that the road stopped at the hotel on the lake, not coming within half-a-mile of his new property, and that they must embark and cross over in ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... respect resemble the bird cinclo, which we call in Spanish Motacilla, or aguzanieve (wagtail), which is a vagrant bird and builds no nest, (37) but broods in those of other birds, a bird restless and poor of plumage, as AElian writes. ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... passed, the emperor's two older sons suddenly arrived with the magic bird and a young girl, who was placed in charge of the poultry-yard. Every body wondered at the beauty of the bird, whose plumage glittered with a thousand hues, each feather shining like the sun, and the church-steeple did not fall after the bird and its nest were placed within. One thing, however, was noticed; the bird seemed dumb, it never uttered a note, and all who saw it grieved that so beautiful a creature should ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... and bold as a poet's desire, Roams her own native heavens, the realms of her birth. There she soars like a seraph, she shines like a fire, And her plumage hath never been ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... many orchids swing from the higher branches like incandescent globes of colored glass. But it is usually impossible for one on the ground to see the finest blooms, which turn their faces to the sunlight above the canopy of green. Gray apes chatter in the tree-tops; strange tropic birds of gorgeous plumage flit from bough to bough, monstrous reptiles slip silently through the undergrowth; insects buzz in swarms above the putrid swamps; occasionally the jungle crashes beneath the tread of some heavy animal—a rhinoceros, perhaps, or a wild bull, or an orang-utan. (I might ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... most gorgeous plumage, which darted down, attracted by the flies, were seized hold of and dragged within the ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... a definite picture of them at the Santa Fe station in Los Angeles and their sudden appearance almost bewildered her. Her mother was a trifle tearful and reproachful but she was radiantly beautiful in her winter plumage. Stephen's handclasp was solid and comforting. Her little brothers had grown out of all belief, and her big brothers were heroic size, and they were all a little shy with her after the excitement of the first greetings. She wondered why ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... to provide the distressed birds and animals with some means of quenching their insupportable thirst. A few yards from the well I constructed a large wooden trough, which I kept filled with water; and each day it was visited by the most extraordinary flocks of birds of every size and variety of plumage—from emus down to what looked like humming-birds. Huge snakes, ten and fifteen feet long, bustled the kangaroos away from the life-giving trough; and occasionally the crowd would be so excessive that some of ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... surfaces come out still more luminously green. Glens and sheltered valleys still hold blues and grays; but points fairly illuminated by the solar glow show just such a fiery green as burns in the plumage of certain humming-birds. And just as the lustrous colors of these birds shift according to changes of light, so the island shifts colors here and there,—from emerald to blue, and blue to gray.... But now we are near: it shows us a lovely heaping of high ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... to sit upon my finger, and eat his sugar and water out of a teaspoon with most Christian-like decorum. He has but one weakness,—he will occasionally jump into the spoon and sit in his sugar and water, and then appear to wonder where it goes to. His plumage is in rather a drabbled state, owing to these performances. I have sketched him as he sat to-day on a bit of Spiraea which I brought in for him. When absorbed in reflection, he sits with his bill straight up in the air, as I have drawn him. Mr. A—— reads Macaulay to us, ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... child, hardly more than thirteen; but her figure is tall and slender, her face calm as if hewn out of alabaster, with severely antique lines, as if her mother had looked always at the Venus of Milo. Her thick black hair has a metallic gleam like the plumage of the black swan; but her eyes are dark-blue. The long delicate eyebrows almost meet over the brow, which gives her face a curious charm; it is as if these arching brows formed a black aureole round the brow ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... hereafter a seat at the golden tables. How high is Michel Angelo's love, for instance, compared with Petrarch's! Petrarch longs, languishes; and it is only after the death of Laura that his muse puts on celestial plumage. But Michel always soars; his love is ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of the hindlegs of a stage elephant on being told that the performance is to be a continuous one and you will have some inkling of the dismay of the Kaiser and his henchman, concealed in the plumage of the War Eagle and the Dove of Peace respectively. The one bird is as useless as the other in bringing the war to the end desired in Berlin. The stage eagle is daily losing its plumage, and is rapidly becoming but a moulty apology for the king of birds. As for the dove, it ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... Following this trail, they struck back into the woods, where in places the gloom cast by the thick foliage was so dense that there was a mere twilight, startling as they went numbers of birds of grey and sombre plumage, whose necks and heads, and the sounds they uttered, were so reptilian that the three terrestrials believed they must also ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... forest was broken by openings like prairies, and in every one of them the grass grew thick and tall, interspersed with sunflowers and blossoming wild plants. Through the woods ran vast networks of vines, and birds of brilliant plumage chattered in the trees. Twice, deer sprang up before them and raced away in the forest. It was the wilderness almost as De Soto had traversed it nearly four centuries before, and it had a majesty which in its wildness was not without its ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the tails hanging down like tassels. On either side of him sat an Indian girl of sixteen or seventeen years, and along the walls of the room two rows of grim warriors, and back of them two rows of women with faces and shoulders painted red, hair bedecked with the plumage of birds, and necks strung with ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... being near an island of ice from which several pieces had broken, we hoisted out two boats, and took on board as much as filled all our empty casks, and the Adventure did the same. While this was doing, Mr Forster shot an albatross, whose plumage was of a colour between brown and dark-grey, the head and upper side of the wings rather inclining to black, and it had white eye-brows. We began to see these birds about the time of our first falling in with ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... but it's onpossible. They are only "shew frigates" arter all; it don't stand to reason, they can't be all clippers. He can't put the leake into me that way, so it tante no use tryin'. Well, the next time, I seed jist such another covey of partridges, same plumage, same step, and same breed. Well done, sais I, they are intarmed to pull the wool over my eyes, that's a fact, but they won't find that no easy matter, I know. Guess they must be done now, they can't show another presarve ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... from Tarshish, gorgeous in velvet or rustling silk, done up in all the accompaniments of fans, ear-rings, and finger-rings, falling sleeves, scent-bottle, embroidered bag, hoop, and train; managing all this seemingly heavy rigging with as much ease as a full-blown swan does its plumage. She would take possession of the centre of a large sofa, and at the same moment, without the slightest visible exertion, cover the whole of it with her bravery, the graceful folds seeming to lay themselves over it, like summer waves. The descent from her ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... come from Mr. Webster's presence and pre- eminent service in his cabinet. In short, Mr. Webster's supporters felt that Mr. Fillmore, so far from earning their respect and deserving their applause, was merely strutting in borrowed plumage, and deriving all his strength from their own illustrious chief. This jealousy was of course stimulated with consummate art and tact by the supporters of Scott. They expressed, as they really entertained, the highest admiration for Webster, and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Raven, he showed himself to be a bird of a very aristocratic nature. He stepped proudly about the fine halls and gardens, and never went near the little cottage or the village streets again. He lived until his fine plumage began to turn gray, and Nannette's oldest son was almost big enough to put on a scarlet coat and a sword; and when he was nearly eighty years old he died on Nannette's knee, his foot in her hand, and the last thing he was conscious of was ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... out his snowy plumage to the gale, And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet, Bears forward fierce, and guards his ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... rival her most vociferous vernal execution. But the poor creature was so truly distressed that I followed her to the front gate, and we twittered kindly at each other over the fence, and ruffled our plumage with common disapproval. It is marvellous how a member of her sex will conceive dislike of people that she has never seen; but birds are sensible of heat or cold long before either arrives, and it may be that this mocking-bird feels something ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... spectacle. Approaching was the dignitary referred to, lance in hand, and apparelled in official robes. The latter consisted of a blanket thrown gracefully around him, and a magnificent head-dress of black plumage covering his head and shoulders, and hanging down his back in a streamer, nearly to the ground. His pace was slow, his eyes cast downward, and his whole demeanour expressive of formal solemnity. Upon his right hand was ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... dove, soft folded in her hands, She presses to her breast; The bird that brought the olive spray Was never more caressed. Her tears upon its plumage fall, They fall like soft warm rain— Sure if the bird were dead such love Would give ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Then his eyes for the first time Catch sight of the sun, see in the heaven That flaming gem, the joy of the firmament 290 Which beams from the east over the ocean billows. Before is that fowl fair in its plumage, Bright colors glow on its gorgeous breast, Behind its head is a hue of green, With brilliant crimson cunningly blended. 295 The feathers of its tail are fairly divided: Some brown, some flaming, some beautifully flecked With brilliant spots. At ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... zone; striped zebras and spotted leopards, glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in purple and scarlet. Let us contrast their delicacy and brilliancy of colour, and swiftness of motion, with the frost-cramped strength, and shaggy covering, and dusky plumage of the northern tribes; contrast the Arabian horse with the Shetland, the tiger and leopard with the wolf and bear, the antelope with the elk, the bird of paradise with the osprey: and then, submissively acknowledging the great laws by which the earth and all that it bears are ruled throughout ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... powerful enough to change the prince back into his true shape again, and I will do so if he will aid me in what follows, and this is it: I will conjure the queen, and by-and-by a great eagle will come flying, and its plumage will be as black as night. Then I myself will become an eagle, with black-and-white plumage, and we two will fight in the air. After a while we will both fall to the ground, and then the prince must cut off the head of the black eagle ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... her shoulder with such an inviting smile that Fletcher followed, feeling very much like a top, in danger of tumbling down the instant he stopped spinning. As she came out Kitty's face cleared, and, assuming her sprightliest air, she spread her plumage and prepared to descend with effect, for a party of uninvited peris stood at the gate of this Paradise casting longing glances at the forbidden splendors within. Slowly, that all might see her, Kitty sailed down, with Horace, the debonair, in her wake, and was just ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... many in this way, and several entangled themselves in the threads left floating for the purpose over the stern. The cape-pigeons were so tame that they came almost on board, and numbers of them were caught in butterfly-nets. Their plumage is not unlike grebe, and I mean to have some muffs and trimmings for the children made out of it. Allen, the coxswain of the gig, skins them very well, having had some lessons from Ward before we left England. I want very much to catch an albatross, in order to have ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... entered had a very smart appearance to eyes which had grown accustomed to the working garb of father and brother. He was, moreover, handsome to a degree that is not ordinary. The curly hair from which he had lifted his fur cap was black and glossy as a blackbird's plumage, and the moustache, which did not cover the full red lips, matched the hair, save that it seemed of finer and softer material. His brown eyes had the glow of health and ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... gather vegetables, and with the assistance of the boats' crews, to superintend the preparations for dinner. At four o'clock the sportsmen returned, bringing red-crested woodpeckers, finches of various hues, humming-birds, black and yellow pies, and others of gay plumage and delicate shape, quite new to us all. A merrier party certainly never met, but the best of the expedition was to come. The tide was now favourable; and we determined to do a spirited thing, and instead of going all the way down the harbour, which would have kept us out beyond the time allowed ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... in July, standing for a moment in the shade beside a birch copse which borders the same road, a jay flew up into the tree immediately overhead, so near that the peculiar shape of the head and bill and all the plumage was visible. He looked down twice, and then flew. Another morning there was a jay on the ground, searching about, not five yards from the road, nor twenty from a row of houses. It was at the corner of a copse which adjoins them. If not so constantly ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... that the robin never left the sepulchre till the Resurrection, and, at the Ascension, joined in the angels' song." The popular imagination, before which the robin appears as "the pious bird with the scarlet breast," found no difficulty in assigning a cause for the colour of its plumage. One legend, current amongst Catholic peoples, has it that "the robin was commissioned by the Deity to carry a drop of water to the souls of unbaptized infants in hell, and its breast was singed in piercing the flames." ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... its height on the Asamuk. The woodthrush was nearing the end of its song; a vast concourse of young robins in their speckled plumage joined chattering every night in the thickest cedars; and one or two broods of young ducks were seen ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... rule, a loyal class of men, but their loyalty will probably be shaken when they realise that the Lord has spoiled their crops to provide Queen's weather for the Jubilee. An occasional shower might wet the Queen's parasol or ruffle the plumage of the princes and princelings in her train. Occasional showers, however, are just what the farmers want. The Lord was therefore in a fix. Though the Bible says that with him nothing is impossible, he was unable to please both sides; so he favored the one he loved ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... accents low, The sportive kind reply: Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly! Thy joys no glittering female meets, No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, No painted plumage to display: On hasty wings thy youth is flown; Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone— We frolic ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... alquilador, who was holding by the bridle the pony or jaco which was destined to carry me in my expedition. It was a beautiful little animal, apparently strong and full of life, without one single white hair in its whole body, which was black as the plumage ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... arm away from her father's grasp, and stood up, with a convulsive flutter of her white plumage like a bird. She flung back her curls and disclosed her beautiful pale face, all strained to terrified resolve, and her dilated blue eyes "I will not!" she cried out, addressing her father alone, "I will not, father. I have made up my mind ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the Birds look young, Or plump of breast, or fine of feather. A skinnier lot than SOL has hung Ne'er skimmed the moor or thronged the heather; But for dull plumage, shrivelled crop, Look at ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... gull Jack is still flourishing, and the time is coming when I look for that singularly sudden change in the plumage of his head which took place last March. I have asked all my ocean-going friends to note whether these little birds are not the gulls par excellence of the sea; and so far all I have heard from them confirms this. It seems almost incredible; ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... with veined onyx. I lay down beside it, and with my pale fingers I touched the broad leaves. One of the priests came towards me and stood behind me. He had sandals on his feet, one of soft serpent-skin and the other of birds' plumage. On his head was a mitre of black felt decorated with silver crescents. Seven yellows were woven into his robe, and his frizzed ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... the society or circumstances by which he might be surrounded. "Chaff" was a very cheap order of wit, and the serenity of his disposition enabled him to shake off its effect as readily as water is scattered from the plumage of the duck. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... was situated on a hilltop, and through the green garden the white dresses of the schoolgirls fluttered like the snowy plumage of a hundred doves. Obeying a sudden impulse, a flock of little ones would race through a deluge of leaf-entangled rays towards a pet companion standing at the end of a gravel-walk examining the flower she has ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... three days after this that Dr. Brown was driving rapidly home toward the village. He had had a tiresome day, and he meant to have a cup of Vesta Dale's good tea and a song from Melody to smooth down his ruffled plumage, and to put him into good-humor again. His patients had been very trying, especially the last one he had visited,—an old lady who sent for him from ten miles' distance, and then told him she had taken seventy-five ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... Watching them from below. The timid bird At last took heart, and, stretching out its wings, Brushed the light vine-leaves as it fluttered down. Just then a hawk rose from a tree, and thrice Wheeled in the air, and poised his aim to drop On the young dove, whose quivering plumage swelled About the sunken talons as it died. Then the hawk fixed his round eye on the child, Shook from his beak the stained down, screamed, and flapped His broad arched wings, and, darting to a cleft I' the rocks, there sullenly devoured his prey. And Jesus heard the ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... boys, announced that the expected arrival was about to take place. The ladies darted to the window, and beholding the avenue full of horsemen and horsewomen, their accoutrements and those of their escort gleaming in the sun, each mother gathered her own chicks to herself, smoothed the plumage somewhat ruffled by sport, and advanced to the head of the stone steps, William Cavendish, the eldest of the boys, being sent down to take his stepfather's rein and hold his stirrup, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... here and there like a raven among birds of brilliant plumage; and never did man look meeker or more submissive. There had been a curious change in his worldly affairs since the time when he preached humility and economy at Dogtown, and was ready to quarrel with any man who did not agree with him that show and extravagance ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... vast, unbroken forest, on either side, met his view. The woodman's axe had opened only here and there a patch of the woods to the light of the sun. These forests abounded with game, and had long been the hunting ground of the red men. The river swarmed with water-fowl of various names and plumage, and often the Indian's birch canoe darted over its waters like ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... may not have the sweet voice which the fox in his flattery attributed to him, but he has a good, strong, native speech, nevertheless. How much character there is in it! How much thrift and independence! Of course his plumage is firm, his color decided, his wit quick. He understands you at once and tells you so; so does the hawk by his scornful, defiant whir-r-r-r-r. Hardy, happy outlaws, the crows, how I love them! Alert, social, republican, always able ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... tree-trunks capriciously, to turn to sudden fires against the depths of hidden purple beyond—the fringe of the mantle the vanguard of night was weaving for the hills. Not a dappled fallow-deer in the coolest shade but had its chance of a robe of glory for a little moment—not a bird so sober in its plumage but became, if only it flew near enough to Heaven, a spark against the blue. And the long, unhesitating rays were not so busy with the world without, but that one of them could pry in at the five-light window at the west end of the Jacobean drawing-room at the Towers, and reach the marble ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... hackle tip wings, tips of two hackle feathers, see Fig. 9. Fan wings, Fig. 4, are a matched pair of small breast feathers, see Fig. 10 (white duck, mallard, teal, grouse, etc.). In fact there is hardly a bird that flies that does not supply some of its plumage to the Fly-Tier. Flies of the order Diptera (land flies), such as the Bee, Cowdung, Blue Bottle, etc., should be tied with flat wings as in Fig. 5. A Bi-visible is shown in Fig. 6. This is a fly ...
— How to Tie Flies • E. C. Gregg
... ready weapons that were sharpened, and weapons that were poisoned; they sent for eagles and falcons to hunt her down, and constructed cages and boxes in which to shut her up if they were not able to kill her. They declared that her white plumage was really put on to hide her black feathers—in fact there was nothing they did not do in order to prevent the king from seeing the bird or from paying attention to her ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... nearly all from the city and neighborhood of Boston. Their hearts were open to the tender influence of buds and blossoms, the fresh springing grass and the bubbling brook. They watched the birds of various plumage; the oriole, who hung his basket nest from the pendant branches of the elm, the robin redbreast who built close in the thick branches of the firs, and the sparrow who was contented with a less prominent nest, as he picked up hairs from the ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... very top with heavy coronets of cones; there were balsamic firs, whose young buds breathe the scent of strawberries; there were cedars, black as midnight clouds, and white pines with their swaying plumage of needle-like leaves, strewing the ground beneath with a golden, fragrant matting; and there were the gigantic, wide-winged hemlocks, hundreds of years old, and with long, swaying, gray beards of moss, looking white and ghostly ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... early-morning doze. Lucky had laid an immense egg. She rolled it with pride to the feet of her young mistress, who promptly began to suck its contents. The ravens flew down to greet her, and she stroked their glossy plumage. ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... easily tell by the set of her lips that Deborah thoroughly disapproved. All right, that was her way, he thought. But this was Laura's way, shedding the gloom and the tragic side as a duck will shed water off its back, a duck with bright new plumage fresh from the shops of the Rue de la Paix and taking some pleasure out of life! What an ardent gleaming beauty she was, he thought as he watched this daughter of his. And underneath his enjoyment, too, though Roger would not have admitted it, was a sense of relief in the news that at least one ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... the maid; Her satin snood, her silken plaid, Her golden brooch such birth betrayed. And seldom was a snood amid 365 Such wild luxuriant ringlets hid, Whose glossy black to shame might bring The plumage of the raven's wing; And seldom o'er a breast so fair, Mantled a plaid with modest care, 370 And never brooch the folds combined Above a heart more good and kind. Her kindness and her worth to spy, You need but gaze on Ellen's eye; Not Katrine, in her mirror blue, 375 Gives back the shaggy banks ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... around the plain, to get an idea of its beauties and extent. The former were inexhaustible, offering every variety of landscape, from the bold and magnificent to the soft and bewitching. There were birds innumerable, of the most brilliant plumage, and some that Mark imagined must be good to eat. In particular did he observe an immense number of a very small sort that were constantly pecking at a wild fig, of which there was a grove of considerable extent. The fig itself, he ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... I have said that we have a game-preserve. We keep quails, or try to, in the thickly wooded, bushed, and brushed ravine. This bird is a great favorite with us, dead or alive, on account of its tasteful plumage, its tender flesh, its domestic virtues, and its pleasant piping. Besides, although I appreciate toads and cows, and all that sort of thing, I like to have a game-preserve more in the English style. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... changing color. "I wonder what would become of Madame de Fleury were it not for her toilets! If she were despoiled of her gay plumage, a very insipid, commonplace looking personage would remain. I must say, it is rather singular," she continued, growing warm in spite of herself, "but if I ever happen to look at anything particularly ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... of a new universe. Conceive an eye so constructed as that the planets and all within them should be minutely seen, and all that is near should be dim and invisible like things seen through a telescope, or as we see through a magnifying glass the plumage of the butterfly, and the bloom upon the peach; then it is manifestly clear that we have called into existence actually a new creation, and not new objects. The mind's eye creates a ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... a harsh laugh and shouted that there was no magic in the business, and that the Lightning Bird's plumage was still intact so far as Vooda was concerned; he, the war-doctor, knew how the thing was done, and would presently explain. Sololo and ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... waving hair, more glossy than the plumage of a raven, a thick, rough, gray rope was visible, twisted and knotted, chafing her delicate collar-bones and twining round the charming neck of the poor girl, like an earthworm round a flower. Beneath that rope glittered a tiny amulet ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... bird of them all was there but liked to have it done to him. And I do believe they would eat from her hand things unnatural to them, lest she should be grieved and hurt by not knowing what to do for them. One of them was a noble bird, such as I never had seen before, of very fine bright plumage, and larger than a missel-thrush. He was the hardest of all to please: and yet he tried to do his best. I have heard since then, from a man who knows all about birds, and beasts, and fishes, that he must have ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... such fine plumage," said Hal. "I've seen birds around here just like those in museums, all colors, and with all kinds of feathers—Birds of Paradise, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... at once there began the most horrid, unearthly screaming, which at first startled me badly, though I had soon remembered the voice of Captain Flint, and even thought I could make out the bird by her bright plumage as she sat ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this hoped-for pleasure so brightened up the little bird that he looked positively lovely! Not even a bird of paradise could have appeared more glorious, dingy brown though our tiny hero's plumage was; but good deeds and kind words always bring a ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... is a paradise for birds. Early in the spring the spotted thrush wings its way through leafy boughs. The cardinal in his bright red coat stays the year round. Neither snow nor winter wind dulls his plumage or stills his song. His mate, in somber green, sings too, but he, unmindful of southern chivalry, attacks her furiously when she bursts into song; ornithologists explain that jealousy prompts the ungallant act. The oriole singing lustily in the spring ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... understand the laws governing the inheritance of traits by taking a few concrete cases. The first case is that of an Andalusian fowl. We shall consider the two species, pure bred black and pure bred white, and confine ourselves to observing the inheritance of the single characteristic, plumage color. Of course, as long as the black mate only with the black their children will be black, and as long as the white mate with white the children will be white. But if a white mates with a black, ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... of Spain! awake! advance! Lo! Chivalry, your ancient Goddess, cries, But wields not, as of old, her thirsty lance, Nor shakes her crimson plumage in the skies: Now on the smoke of blazing bolts she flies, And speaks in thunder through yon engine's roar: In every peal she calls—"Awake! arise!" Say, is her voice more feeble than of yore, When her war-song was heard on ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... Others, with boar-spears, swords, and old-fashioned guns, were attacking stags or boars whom they had brought to bay. The branches of the woven forest were crowded with fowls of various kinds, each depicted with its proper plumage. It seemed as if the prolific and rich invention of old Chaucer had animated the Flemish artist with its profusion, and Oldbuck had accordingly caused the following verses, from that ancient and excellent poet, to be ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... important controversy is conducted in regard to the gorgeous plumage and other decorations and weapons of the male birds. Darwin, as is known, advanced a theory of "sexual selection" to explain these. The male peacock, to take a concrete instance, would have developed its beautiful tail because, through tens of thousands ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... one of his hens with a right and left of "sixes" and found that they were jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) in full plumage. The cock was a splendid bird. The long neck feathers (hackles) spread over his back and wings like a shimmering golden mantle, but it was hardly more beautiful than the black of his underparts and green-glossed tail. Picture to yourself a "black-breasted red" gamecock and you have ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... There is a chap in Amsterdam who does about the same thing and brightens up old worn birds which have faded out in the Zoological Gardens, and sends them back with all the brilliancy of their original plumage restored; but he cannot turn a red parrot blue, or make a gray bird with a yellow head turn to bright orange all over, as this chap could. He told me how he did it, but the secret is too good to give away. But to get back to the ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... Reformee Francaise, a church situated in a much-frequented part. It is amusing to see a black rook perched on a red tile chimney, with the smoke coming up around him, and darkening with soot his dingy plumage. They take every scrap thrown out, like sparrows, and peck bones if they find them. The builders in Brighton appear to have somewhat overshot the mark, to judge from the number of empty houses, and, indeed, it is currently reported that it ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... bodies of those Bharata princes, flew into the sky. Indeed, those arrows winged with gold, piercing through the hearts of thy sons, looked beautiful, O monarch, as they passed into the sky, like birds of excellent plumage. Decked with gold and covered all over with blood, those arrows, O king, drinking the blood of thy sons passed out of their body. Pierced in their vital limbs by means of those arrows, they fell down on ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... cloud-bedappled sky, To bare-shorn field and gleaming water; To frost-night herbage, and perishing flower; While the Robin haunted the yellow bower; With his faery plumage and jet-black eye, Like an unlaid ghost some scene of slaughter: All mournful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... not the latest cut, son, or the finest fit, but you won't mind; you're not a girl. A man's dress is on'y a sort o' skin, anyhow; a woman's is her plumage. And, anyhow, at Rosemont you'll wear soldier clothes. Look out son, I asked yo' dear motheh ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... of light rises from his couch, curtained with rose and daffodil-coloured drapery. As these gorgeous curtains spread east and west, and he takes his morning bath in the clouds and vapours, rises up the proud monarch of the farm-yard, as if in bold rivalry, outspreads his fine plumage in emulation of the rose and daffodil curtains, and bids him welcome with a voice so loud and shrill, that he must almost hear it from his domed throne above. More arbitrary in his kingdom than the sun in his, this grand Turk insists on arousing all his subjects; and the sleepy inmates of his harem ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... containing a large army of pigeons, but the regard which the Lady de Tilly had for the corn-fields of her censitaires caused her to thin out its population to such a degree that there remained only a few favorite birds of rare breed and plumage to strut and coo upon the roofs, and rival the peacocks on the terrace with their ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... beast, That dwelleth either in wood or in forest; But would have wept, if that he weepe could, For sorrow of her; she shriek'd alway so loud. For there was never yet no man alive, If that he could a falcon well descrive;* *describe That heard of such another of fairness As well of plumage, as of gentleness; Of shape, of all that mighte reckon'd be. A falcon peregrine seemed she, Of fremde* land; and ever as she stood *foreign She swooned now and now for lack of blood; Till well-nigh is she fallen from ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... and of the beak,—although they have no relation to each other, yet appear to go together,—that is, you have a long beak wherever you have long feet. There are differences also in the periods of the acquirement of the perfect plumage—the size and shape of the eggs—the nature of flight, and the powers of flight—so-called "homing" birds having enormous flying powers; [Footnote: The "Carrier," I learn from Mr. Tegetmeier, does not carry; a high-bred bird of this breed being but a ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... salmon, the best part of which had been cured, and hidden in the ground. The women were badly clad; the children worse; their garments were buffalo robes, or the skins of foxes, hares, and badgers, and sometimes the skins of ducks, sewed together, with the plumage on. Most of the skins must have been procured by traffic with other tribes, or in distant hunting excursions, for the naked prairies in the neighborhood afforded few animals, excepting horses, which were abundant. There were signs ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... comes sidling, gliding along the barbed wire fence, the Baltimore oriole, always a charming fellow because of his flaming plumage, which has won for him the name of the golden robin and firebird. He walks along the wire fence in a gliding, one-leg-at-a-time fashion, as he often does on the twig of a tree. His head is down, he is on the lookout for caterpillars. Now he reaches the tick-trefoil, and nips out some stamens from ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... ruffle their plumage and gulp down a sob or two,' he reflected, his tongue in his cheek, a little intoxicated, as usual, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... making decoys for geese, by chopping blocks of dry pine into rough images of their bodies, and fashioning their necks and heads from bent willow sticks; as well as roughly staining the completed models to represent the plumage. And while he worked he talked of the coming of the birds ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... Percival followed the golden bird] So Sir Percival travelled that path for some distance as the lady had advised him to do, and by and by he beheld the bird of which she had spoken. And he saw that the plumage of the bird glistered as though it was of gold so that he marvelled at it. And as he drew nigh the bird flew a little distance down the path and then lit upon the ground and he followed it. And when he had come ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... than is known in any other group of vertebrates, and, in this vast assemblage of forms there is strikingly little anatomical difference. The ostrich and the humming-bird might perhaps be taken as types of the extremest differences to be found, and yet, although these differ in size, plumage, adaptations, habits, mode of life, and almost everything that can separate living things, the two conform so closely to the common type of bird structure that knowledge of the anatomy of one would be a sufficient guide, down to minute details, for dissection of the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... travelling was too heavy for the camels, so camped for the remainder of the day. In the afternoon the sky cleared a little, and the sun soon dried the ground, considering. Shot a pheasant, and much disappointed at finding him all feathers and claws. This bird nearly resembles a cock pheasant in plumage, but in other respects it bears more the character of the magpie or crow; the feathers are remarkably ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
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