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Bird's-eye   Listen
adjective
Bird's-eye  adj.  
1.
Seen from above, as if by a flying bird; embraced at a glance; hence, general; not minute, or entering into details; as, a bird's-eye view.
2.
Marked with spots resembling bird's eyes; as, bird's-eye diaper; bird's-eye maple.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bird's-eye" Quotes from Famous Books



... Get well, Lilly. Mamma's been cross at times, but never again. We'll do everything to make you happy. You can read your eyes out and mamma won't turn out the light on you. Mamma will buy you books and a box of paints and a little bird's-eye-maple room all your own. Lilly, mamma's baby. We're going housekeeping—your own piano—your own room. Aren't we, ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... the old fellow were in some scheme with another to get him interested. As he drew closer, he saw radiations of some twelve inches, all over the face of the coal, star-shaped, and he almost gasped. It was not only cannel coal—it was "bird's-eye" cannel. Heavens, what a find! Instantly he was the cautious man of business, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... me again to-morrow night," said Eileen, enjoying her own comedy powers. "My poor father tried to teach me the difference between bird's-eye and shag, but I could ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... milky whiteness spread more and more over the whole heavens though they were still darkened here and there by wreaths of smoke. Little by little, bright clusters of houses became plainly visible; a bird's-eye view was obtained of the whole city, intersected by streets and squares, which with their shadowy depths described the framework of the ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... The bird's-eye view of an Edinburgh Reviewer who described Melmoth as "the sacrifice of Genius in the Temple of False Taste," will give some idea of the bewildering ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... that our memorable Long Parliament, brought together in November of 1642,[19] our Parliamentary eloquence has now, within four years, travelled through a period of two centuries. A most admirable subject for an essay, or a Magazine article, as it strikes me, would be a bird's-eye view—or rather a bird's-wing flight—pursuing rapidly the revolutions of that memorable oracle (for such it really was to the rest of civilised Europe), which, through so long a course of years, like the Delphic ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... interrupted the priest in mild glee, "here's a subject to talk about at lunch. Just get Manners on to it, and you'll have no trouble. He loves lecturing; and he talks just like a history-book. Tell him you've been reading his History and want a bird's-eye view." ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... watches: perched on high, in a peaceful suburb, in the midst of green gardens;—made up of paper panels, and taken to pieces according to one's fancy, like a child's toy. Whole families of cicalas chirp day and night under our old resounding roof. From our verandah, we have a bewildering bird's-eye view of Nagasaki, of its streets, its junks and its great pagodas, which, at certain hours, is lit up at our feet like some ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... rule that the foreground should be placed sharply in profile and often so deep in shadow that it contrasted like a silhouette with the more distant grounds. On the other hand, it is a favorite whim of the genuine pigtail age to draw bird's-eye landscapes and views of cities, in which every elevation of the earth seems flattened out as much as possible, every distinct division of the separate grounds ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... fifty-two short essays of this volume I have presented familiar objects from unusual points of view. Bird's-eye glances and insect's-eye glances, at the nature of our woods and fields, will reveal beauties which are wholly invisible from the usual human view-point, five feet or more above ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... interesting and fascinating it is for a man to have a yacht in which he can fly to Europe in one day, and with which the exploration of tropical Africa or the regions about the poles is mere child's play, while giving him so magnificent a bird's-eye view! Many seemingly insoluble problems are solved by the advent of these birds. Having as their halo the enforcement of peace, they have in truth taken us a long step towards heaven, and to the co-operation and higher civilization ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... signboard; this also was at once ancient and gay. On the other side the ground to seaward swept down and then up again to the famous or infamous wood; the square of strange trees lay silently tilted on the slope, also suggesting, if not a map, or least a bird's-eye view. Only the triple centerpiece of the peacock trees rose clear of the sky line; and these stood up in tranquil sunlight as things almost classical, a triangular temple of the winds. They seemed pagan in a newer and more placid sense; and he felt a newer and more boyish curiosity ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton

... Africa into the Congo region on the Western side, returning afterward to the East for a bird's-eye view of the Abyssinians, the Somali, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... to support themselves. Some of our party were nearly exhausted, and a long way in the rear before we came to the village. We had to wait for their coming up, and threw ourselves under the shade of some huge trees, that we might contemplate the bird's-eye view beneath. It was a sight which must be seen to be appreciated. Almost as far as the eye could reach was one immense wooded plain, bounded by lofty mountains in the far distance, whose tops pierced the clouds. The rivers appeared like silver threads, running through the jungles; ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... where you can get a complete bird's-eye view of it," said Jeff, "and two-thirds of it would be hid in smoke, anyway. You've got to think of a place that would take in the whole population of New England, outside of Massachusetts, and not feel as if it had more ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... was outside. Quong carried in a couple of pails full of boiling water; we laid out shaving tackle, an old suit of grey flannel, a pair of brown shoes, and the necessary under-linen. A blue bird's-eye tie, I remember, was the last touch. Then Ajax shrugged his shoulders and said significantly, "You ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... prospect at the end of the hill, where the ground falls away like a cliff and you have a bird's-eye view of two counties, we sat down on the steps of the monument erected in honour of those Hampdenshire men whose lives were thrown away in ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... which he had had specially taken and framed by a local man in bird's-eye maple, as a present for Arabella, and had duly given her on their wedding-day. On the back was still to be read, "Jude to Arabella," with the date. She must have thrown it in with the rest of her ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... which we have proposed should be prefaced by a chronological table, indicating the epochs into which the World's History divides itself, and the periods covered by each of the works recommended. This would give the student a bird's-eye view of the field which he is about to explore, and enable him, at any moment in his exploration, to take his ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... infinite number of microcosms reflecting a common image of God. And poetry which holds by this creed will hardly be subservient to societies and governments and legalised doctrines and conventions; it will hold to them by a long and loose chain, if at all. It flies high enough, at any rate, to take a bird's-eye view of all manner of things which in the temple, the palace, or the market-place, have come to be taken as axiomatic. It eyes them with an extraordinary 'dissoluteness'—if you will give that word its literal meaning. It sees that some accepted virtues carry no reflection ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the great wonder of the Western World is for miles at a stretch more than fifty times as deep as the falls and the gorge, generally admitted to be the most awful scenic grandeur within reach of the ordinary traveler. Nor is this all. Visitors to Paris who have enjoyed a bird's-eye view of the gay city from the summit of Eifel Tower, have felt terribly impressed with its immense altitude, and have been astounded at the effect on the appearance of living and inanimate objects so far below them. How many of the Americans who have been thus impressed by French ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... diverse views to be obtained from mountain heights. To me, personally, such a view as that from the promontory of Sunium, or, above all, from the harbor of Nauplia, exceeds in beauty and interest any bird's-eye prospect. Any one who looks at the map of Greece will see how the Acro-Corinthus commands coasts, islands, and bays. The day was too hazy when we stood there to let us measure the real limits of the view, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... for a bird's-eye view of the city, and the scene is entrancing. We look down upon the calm-flowing Exe threading its way through the valley till it debouches at Exmouth; on the riverside beneath us is the quay, with coasting schooners and barges ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath

... the harbor,—by flights of old mossy stone steps,—that looking down them to the azure water you have the sensation of gazing from a cliff. From certain openings in the main street—the Rue Victor Hugo—you can get something like a bird's-eye view of the harbor with its shipping. The roofs of the street below are under your feet, and other streets are rising behind you to meet the mountain roads. They climb at a very steep angle, occasionally breaking into stairs of lava ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... oval-shaped islands,—all slumbering in the evening calm. He was looking for the weak point in the ramparts, the place where he might make a breach and put up his scaling ladders. For his plan was to take Orleans by assault. William Glasdale said to him, "My Lord, look well at your city. You have a good bird's-eye view of it ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... At the dinner hour she strides into our apartment without bidding, and takes her allotted place. The bird's two feet six inches of legs serve her instead of a chair, and her swan-like neck enables her to take a bird's-eye view of the most distant dish. But she never ventures to help herself to anything till the meal is actually placed on the plate before her; nor does she bolt her food like a beast, but disposes of it gracefully, like the best educated biped. Jerking the article for consumption neatly into ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... have been very few fogs in London of late, but your foreigner nearly always finds London foggy. Kent does not show along its main railway line the evidence of agricultural depression: it is like a garden. Yet, in a very careful and thorough French book just published by a French traveller, his bird's-eye view of the country as he went through Kent just after landing would make you think the place a desert; he seems to have thought the hedges a sign of agricultural decay. The same foreigner will discover a plebeian character in the Commons and ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... winding road, or from the bird's-eye elevation of the adjacent tor, Newtake, with its mean ship-pens and sties, outbuildings and little crofts, all huddled together, poverty-stricken, time-fretted, wind-worn, and sad of colour, appeared a mere forlorn fragment of civilisation left derelict upon the savage ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... see the first dawn stain With sallow light the window-pane: To dress—to wear a rough drab coat, With large pearl buttons all afloat Upon the waves of plush: to tie A kerchief of the King-cup dye (White spotted with a small bird's-eye) Around the neck, and from the nape Let fall an easy fan-like cape: To quit the house at morning's prime, At six or so—about the time When watchmen, conscious of the day Puff out their lantern's rush-light ray; Just when the ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... States of the Union to their normal relations, and also marked the disappearance of the negro problem as the central feature in national politics. From that time to the present we shall take but a bird's-eye view of the fortunes and the mutual relation ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... a bird's-eye view of the promised land, the General escorted them to his apartments and allowed them to see the Ark of the Covenant in the shape of a somewhat dilapidated leather trunk, which contained a paper alleged to be ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... review aims at seeing new relations, at connecting new knowledge and old, at "giving freshness and vividness to knowledge that may be somewhat faded, at throwing a number of discrete facts into a bird's-eye view." ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education

... aimlessly," he decided at length, "and I'll either have to gain a bird's-eye view of the country or get Mr. Balfour to make me a map. To think that I should have discovered him, and here of all places in the world. What a sensation it will make when I tell of it. Of course I shall do so, for I'll get ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe

... up, and the two soldiers nodded. The position lay before them like a bird's-eye view; and Concepcion, in whom Spain had perhaps lost a guerilla general, had only set eyes on the spot once as ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman

... we have just entered is about twenty feet square. It is lined over the top with white cotton cloth, the breadths of which, being sewed together only in spots, stretch gracefully apart in many places, giving one a bird's-eye view of the shingles above. The sides are hung with a gaudy chintz, which I consider a perfect marvel of calico-printing. The artist seems to have exhausted himself on roses. From the largest cabbage down to the tiniest Burgundy, he has arranged them in every possible ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... "there were only posts, rails, and a chain, such as are now in Holborn, Smithfield, and Whitechapel bars. Afterwards there was a house of timber erected across the street, with a narrow gateway and an entry on the south side of it under the house." This structure is to be seen in the bird's-eye view of London, 1601 (Elizabeth), and in Hollar's seven-sheet map ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... have gained a bird's-eye view of the vessel would have seen sufficient to excite his distrust of that innocent-seeming craft. From the water-side only ten or twelve men could be seen, but on looking downward the decks would ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... a day. He handled them well over the rough corduroys and swamp roads. From jam to rear and back again he travelled, pausing on the river banks to converse earnestly with one of the foremen, surveying the situation with the bird's-eye view of the general. At times he remained at one camp for several days watching the trend of the work. The improvements made during the preceding summer gave him the greatest satisfaction, especially the apron ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... to any conditions they can get, and the sovereignty of the world is left to the birds. However much all this resembles a mere farcical fairy tale, it may be said, however, to have a philosophical signification, in thus taking a sort of bird's-eye view of all things, seeing that most of our ideas are only true in a human ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... slipped by, and Clara duly confided her youth and her innocence and her roses to her English husband, a little ashamed of the wedding presents her friends sent her, even a little doubtful of her parents' handsome gift of a bird's-eye maple bedroom set and a parlor set ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... visit to the Navy Yard at Charlestown, in company with the Naval Officer of Boston, and Cilley. Dined aboard the revenue-cutter Hamilton. A pretty cabin, finished off with bird's-eye maple and mahogany; two looking-glasses. Two officers in blue frocks, with a stripe of lace on each shoulder. Dinner, chowder, fried fish, corned beef,—claret, afterwards champagne. The waiter tells the Captain of the cutter that ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... while mine are some five feet ten. Three feet do not count for much when we are considering astronomical distances, but they make a great difference in the way things seem. There is a difference in the horizon line, and the realm of mystery begins much nearer. There is no disenchanting bird's-eye view of the counter with all things thereon. There are alluring glimpses of ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers

... le Bon, and Charles le Temeraire; but of that ancient building there remain only the Tour de Brancion, the Salle des Gardes, the kitchens and vaulted rooms on the ground-floor, and the Tour de la Terrasse, 152 feet high, ascended by 323 steps, and commanding a bird's-eye view of the whole town. The rest is modern, and is occupied by the Htel de Ville, the Post Office, the cole des Beaux Arts, the Museums, and the Protestant church. The museum is on the right side of the great court, and is open to the public on Sundays. Other days a fee of 1fr. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... a little tobacco-shop at the corner of the street, where Montgomery got his bird's-eye and also his local information, for the shopman was a garrulous soul, who knew everything about the affairs of the district. The assistant strolled down there after tea and asked, in a casual way, whether the tobacconist had ever heard of the ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... conducted down it: and the prospect which burst upon us in front, had apparently no limit but the power of human vision. Beyond the foreground, which was formed by a series of rocky glens diverging from below the point on which we stood, the immense vale of the Saone extended like a bird's-eye view of the ocean, its relative distances marked by towns and villages glittering like white sails. Above the flat line of haze, which, at the first glance, appears to terminate the prospect at the ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... of the new woods of the new country, and made free use of the abundant wild cherry for the furniture called for by the growing prosperity of the settlements, its close grain and warm color giving it the preference over other native woods, excepting always the curly and bird's-eye maple, which were novelties to ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler

... safe passage, and said, "I was afraid he would find it very dusty." As I could not find the office to book myself by this young gentleman's conveyance, I walked down to St Katherine's Docks; went on board a packet; was shewn into a superb cabin, fitted up with bird's-eye maple, mahogany, and looking-glasses, and communicating with certain small cabins, where there was a sleeping berth for each passenger, about as big as that allowed to a pointer in a dog-kennel. I thought ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... projected a study of Swiss history: to tell the tale of six chief towns—Geneva, Fribourg, Basle, Thun, Baden and Schaffhausen, to which in 1858 he added Rheinfelden and Bellinzona. He intended to illustrate the work with pictures of the places described. He began with his drawing of Thun, a large bird's-eye view of the town with its river and bridges, roofs and towers, all exquisitely defined with the pen, and broadly coloured in fluctuating tints that seem to melt always into the same aerial blue; the blue, high up the picture, beyond the plain, ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... the 10 a.m. Scotch express, was one who had been so far able to propitiate the guard as to secure a whole compartment to himself. He was enjoying himself in a quiet way—smoking, and skimming his papers, and taking a bird's-eye view now and again at the landscape that was flying past him at the rate of forty miles an hour. Few people who cared to speculate as to his profession would have hesitated to set him down as a military man, even had not the words, "Captain Ducie," painted in white letters ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... here, as far as the eye could reach, the country had an appearance suggestive of a huge and dried-up lake. This idea was borne out by an odd blotchiness, for sometimes there would be half a mile or more of seeming moorland, then a sharply defined change (or it seemed sharply defined from that bird's-eye point of view). A vivid greenness marked these changes, which merged into a dun coloured smudge and again into the brilliant green; then the ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... curving upward like an inverted umbrella, imprinted upon a favorite tea-plate, we often sallied forth in fancy to explore the Chinese world as portrayed in blue or pink upon earthen table-ware of the olden time. And what a world! How artfully adapted to childish notions, how convenient for bird's-eye views, this arrangement of lofty mountain peaks, deep gorges, and rocks of fantastic forms, tangled up with examples of nature subdued by Chinese art in landscape gardening and ornate architecture. In the near distance (far and near are ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.

... country. It is assuredly impossible to form a clear or indeed any correct idea in regard to a nation unless we know something of the manners and customs, the daily life, the amusements, the vices of its people. Unless we can, as it were, take a bird's-eye view of the people at work and at play, at their daily avocations in their homes, see them as they come into the world, as they go through life's pilgrimage, and, finally, as they pay the debt of nature and are carried to their last resting-place in accordance with ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... occupation. I expostulated with him in public and in private; Mr. Pepper cut his society; Mr. Tomlinson read him an essay on Real Greatness of Soul: all was in vain. He was pumped by the mob for the theft of a bird's-eye wipe. The fault I had borne with,—the detection was unpardonable; I expelled him. Who's here so base as would be a fogle-hunter? If any, speak; for him have I offended! Who's here so rude as would ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... away there in the north month after month and year after year. The ice is split and piled up into mounds, which extend in every direction. If one could get a bird's-eye view of the ice-fields, they would seem to be cut up into squares or meshes by a network of these packed ridges, or pressure-dikes, as we called them, because they reminded us so much of snow-covered stone dikes at home, such as, in many parts of the country, are used to enclose ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... the bridge head would permit our friends to obtain a bird's-eye view of the city, while I purchased a measure of fresh-caught, shiny-scaled river fish, only to be had of the old boatman after the arrival of the Paris train. Invariably there were packages to be called for ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... the novelty of my situation, at first checked those lively and varied trains of thought which the bird's-eye view of so many countries passing in review before us, was calculated to excite: yet, after I had become more familiar with it, I contemplated the beautiful exhibition with inexpressible delight. Besides, a glass of cordial, as well as the calm, confiding air of the Brahmin, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... Gospel had begun at Jerusalem. Before Luke goes on to tell how the last part of our Lord's programme—'to the uttermost parts of the earth'—began to be carried into execution by the conversion of Cornelius, he gives us this bird's-eye view. To its significant items I desire to draw ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... the road wound down to a forest that had formed a dark blur in our bird's-eye view of the plain. We passed into the forest and halted on the edge of a colony of queer exotic huts. On all sides they peeped through the branches, themselves so branched and sodded and leafy that they seemed like some transition form between tree ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... no connection with farm life. They went straight into the thick timber-land, instead of going to the rich and waiting prairies, and they crowned this initial mistake by cutting down the splendid timber instead of letting it stand. Thus bird's-eye maple and other beautiful woods were used as fire-wood and in the construction of rude cabins, and the greatest asset of ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw

... distance across the island was less than three miles, and by a bird's-eye survey from the highest point in the centre, they calculated that the most practicable path would be about five miles. By this they at once set about removing their goods; carrying them in some parts on their shoulders, ...
— The Two Shipmates • William H. G. Kingston

... name a book of travels in which anecdotes, observations, and reflections are more agreeably mingled, or one from which a clearer bird's-eye view of the external state of countries visited in rapid succession may be caught. I can only spare room for a ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... gained a general idea, snatched a sort of bird's-eye view of this strange Castle, we returned to our room ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... an artillery bombardment is on and you go to as high ground as possible for a bird's-eye view of battle, all that you see is the explosion of the shells; never anything of the guns which are firing. In the distance over the German lines and in the foreground over the British lines is a balloon, shaped like a caterpillar with folded wings—a ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... actual game was to lose his head, and then at the end of four minutes' deliberation he had to move, he blundered desperately. He opened fire on Blue's exposed centre and killed eight men. (Their bodies litter the ground in figure 7, which gives a complete bird's-eye view of the battle.) He then sent forward and isolated six or seven men in a wild attempt to recapture his lost gun, massed his other men behind the inadequate cover of his central gun, and sent the detachment of infantry that had hitherto lurked uselessly behind the church, in a frantic ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells

... in touch with parties that could furnish this." This was a large photographic bird's-eye map of a country which looked very much like Arizona, or the wild places anywhere next the Mexican borderline. "Where I got it I am not at liberty to say. It's a practice map—done for the training in aerial photography that is essential nowadays in warfare. ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... When I returned I was surprised to hear that Robinson had found the horses in a small but extra dense bunch of scrub not twenty yards from the spot where he had tied his horses up. While I was away he had gone on top of the little stony eminence close by, and from its summit had obtained a bird's-eye view of the ground below, and thus perceived the two animals, which had never been absent at all. It seemed strange to me that I could not find their tracks, but the reason was there were no tracks to find. I took it for granted when Carmichael ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... with their synthetic bird's-eye view, the mind sometimes sees more clearly than in hours of careful reflection and analysis. And the first thing he saw now was Minks, his friendly, ridiculous little confidential secretary. From all the crowds of men and women he knew, respected, and enjoyed in London, as from the vast deluge ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... facts and views which seemed essential to an intelligent discussion of the main subject, we pass on to examine the Appalachian outlet by which the great Western empire of America may find its way to the sea. The bird's-eye view here presented will show the Appalachian mountain-chain, and the waters which thread their way along its gentle slopes eastward to the Atlantic basin and westward to the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys. The Alleghanies ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... and primarily, for use in a course entitled "Introduction to Contemporary Civilization," required of all Freshmen in Columbia College. It is an attempt to give a bird's-eye view of the processes of human nature, from man's simple inborn impulses and needs to the most complete fulfillment of these in the deliberate activities of religion, art, science, and morals. It is hoped that the book may give to the student and general reader a knowledge of the fundamentals ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... for the night, and now was up there on the heights, out of reach of danger, while at his feet lay the valley of the Meuse and the vast panorama of the field of battle. Far as the eye could reach, from north to south, the bird's-eye view extended, and standing on the summit of the hill, as from his throne in some colossal opera box, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... the visitor for a couple of days, and its art gallery for a day longer. We were taking only a bird's-eye view, or review, and stayed only over one night, not making even the classic excursion to those artists' haunts of Volendam, Monnikendam, and Marken, of which no book on Holland ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... in our delightful journey, we must pause a moment, and turning square round, with our faces towards the long-ago years of the past, take a bird's-eye view of the early history of our country, that we may know exactly where we are when we come to find ourselves in the outskirts of that long and bloody struggle between the two great nations of England and France, commonly called the Seven Years' War, and sometimes the Old French War. Now, ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... make the necessary allowances. After examining her well, when she was within a league of the cliffs, he came to the opinion that the ship was a vessel of about six hundred tons, and that she was both armed and strongly manned. So far as he could judge, by the bird's-eye view he got, he fancied she was even frigate-built, and had a regular gundeck. In that age such craft were very common, sloops of war having that construction quite as often as that of the more modern deep-waisted vessel. As for the brigs, they were much ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... however, the commencement of a chapter of accidents. I went down the pass, and there, sure enough, I had a fine bird's-eye view of the carriage down a precipice on the road side. One horse was so injured that it was necessary to destroy him; the other died a few days after. Perkes had been intoxicated; and, while driving at a full gallop round a corner, over went ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... given this account of the patterns founded on the lotus, as we can almost from this distance of time take a bird's-eye view of its rise in naturalism, its spread, dispersion, and its crystallization into conventional forms; also we can trace how the lotus patterns of Indian art have resulted, when accepted in Europe, in nothing but the rolling wave, carrying flower forms which ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... they had now reached Sibylla and Ned commanded a bird's-eye view of the entire harbour, with South Island—as it soon came to be called—for a background, with the southern horizon showing just clear of its highest portion. Ned was now able to form a very much more correct idea of the entire locality than had before been possible; ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... say they have done it. There are grand and noble exceptions, but these are generally among those who do not care to SAY anything about it. The great majority, however, come forth in the mental condition of the man, who laboriously climbs step by step of the tower, takes his bird's-eye view of the field of learning, accepts the impressions made upon his mind by the vast picture and the vast mixture, and comes down to his own level again with no more real knowledge of that at which he has glanced than has the traveller who has ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... various as the authors whom it misjudges. In the case of Shakespeare, when we attempt to estimate him, to gauge him, to see him from all sides, we become almost painfully conscious of his immensity. We can build no watch-tower high enough to give us a bird's-eye view of that "globe of miraculous continents." We are out of breath when we attempt to accompany him on his ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... Also a seasoning slight of lucubration; A bird's-eye view, too, of that wild, Society; A slight glance thrown on men of every station. If you have nought else, here's at least satiety, Both in performance and in preparation; And though these lines should only line portmanteaus, Trade will be all the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... bird's-eye view of creation, as interpreted by science, which, in language always clear and sometimes picturesque, he unfolded before us. He told us of the globe, a huge mass of flaming gas, flaring through the heavens. Then he pictured ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... occupied, must then erect others for themselves; but this is not difficult, for there is no lack of long grass. No sooner do any strangers appear at the spot, than the women may be seen emerging from their villages bearing baskets of manioc-meal, roots, ground-nuts, yams, bird's-eye pepper, and garlic for sale. Calico, of which we had brought some from Cassange, is the chief medium of exchange. We found them all civil, and it was evident, from the amount of talking and laughing in bargaining, that the ladies ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... of the explorers was much larger, though probably not much longer. This carried us three with our baggage, weighing in all between five hundred and fifty and six hundred pounds. We had two heavy, though slender, rock-maple paddles, one of them of bird's-eye maple. Joe placed birch bark on the bottom for us to sit on, and slanted cedar splints against the cross-bars to protect our backs, while he himself sat upon a cross-bar in the stern. The baggage occupied the middle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... office looked up at this, and saw that two men were standing at the half-open door—one an extremely handsome young man of about thirty, dressed in a neat suit of blue serge, and wearing a large white wide-awake hat, with a bird's-eye handkerchief twisted round it. His companion was short and heavily built, dressed somewhat the same, but with his black hat pulled down over ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... position, now that the lapse of many years separates me from my personal investigations of the ancient and modern glaciers, and I look back upon them from another continent, it seems to me that I have, as it were, a bird's-eye view of their whole extent; and I confess that this distant retrospect of the subject has been to me almost as fascinating as were the researches of my earlier years in the same direction. I wish that I could present it to the minds of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... like a mountain road, veering and twisting, and often appearing to turn back upon itself, and having many by-roads, which lead us astray. If we know but a few miles of it we cannot tell whether it leads north or south or due west. But if from any mountain-top we can gain a clear bird's-eye view of its whole course, we easily distinguish the main road, its turns become quite insignificant, we see that it leads as directly as any engineering skill could locate it through the mountains to the fertile plains and ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... in some ways, crucial. I have spoken with Jesuits and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and poets, dogmatic republicans and dear old gentlemen in bird's-eye neckcloths; and each understood the word "facts" in an occult sense of his own. Try as I might, I could get no nearer the principle of their division. What was essential to them seemed to me trivial or untrue. We could come to no compromise as to what was, or what was not, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... relations and friends, had been provided with a good place in one of the upper stories of the Romer itself, where we might completely survey the whole. We betook ourselves to the spot very early in the morning, and from above, as in a bird's-eye view, contemplated the arrangements which we had inspected more closely the day before. There was the newly-erected fountain, with two large tubs on the left and right, into which the double-eagle on the post was to pour from its two beaks white wine on this side and red ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... and gray, enshrouding mist. At the tea-table, large, mild, reposeful, clothed in wealth of black silk and black lace, was Mrs. Cathcart. Lord Fallowfeild, his handsome, infantile countenance beaming with good-nature and good-health above his blue-and-white, bird's-eye stock and scarlet hunting-coat, sat by her discoursing with great affability and at great length. Mary Ormiston stood near them, an expression of kindly diversion upon her face. Her figure had grown somewhat matronly in these days, and there were lines in her forehead and about the corners ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... and all other isms pierced and lashed, you descend from your intellectual heights, eat a good dinner, take a nap, and live like the rest of us till the next Sabbath, when (if it is a fine day) you climb some other theological peak, far beyond the limits of perpetual snow, and there take another bird's-eye view of something that might be found very different if ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... front, hands down; I remember the snort and the stag-like bound Of the steed six lengths to the fore, And the laugh of the rider while, landing sound, He turned in his saddle and glanced around; I remember—but little more, Save a bird's-eye gleam of the dashing stream, A jarring thud on the wall, A shock and the blank of a nightmare's dream— I was down with ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... fast crumbling to ruins, the latter, which is the place where the Khedive worships, is fairly well preserved. From the citadel, which is garrisoned by English soldiers, we obtained an excellent bird's-eye view of Cairo, the broad surface of the Nile and the Pyramids of Cairo and Sakarah, the latter of which are twenty ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... hill in the direction of the Bimbel ranch," suggested Spouter. "I'd like to get a bird's-eye ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer

... map, a bird's-eye view is presented of the entire position in this vicinity. Details will be found in the larger maps. Care has been taken to give the outlines, roads, and relative distances with accuracy. The plan is a photographic ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... table, Hadley yawned, stretched himself, and, sauntering over to a window, stood looking out upon the busy city below. From that elevation the bird's-eye view was wonderful. The broad avenues below, teeming with life, the surging, confused mass of pedestrians and vehicles, the close network of side-streets filled with busy traffic, the silvery Hudson with sailing ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... twenty years earlier—for King's drawing, issued in 1656, shows the north-west tower already partly destroyed; so it is necessary to conclude that the drawing for the "Monasticon" was done before 1656, but after 1610, when Speed's map, or bird's-eye view, of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette

... simple way does the value of our educated class define itself: we more than others should be able to divine the worthier and better leaders. The terms here are monstrously simplified, of course, but such a bird's-eye view lets us immediately take our bearings. In our democracy, where everything else is so shifting, we alumni and alumnae of the colleges are the only permanent presence that corresponds to the aristocracy in older countries. We have continuous traditions, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... Orkhon, north of Erdeni Tso, and the Ho-lin or Karakorum of the Mongols, would be 70 li (about 30 miles), and such is the space between Erdeni Tso and Kara Balgasun. M. Marcel Monnier (Itineraires, p. 107) estimates the bird's-eye distance from Erdeni Tso to Kara Balgasun at 33 kilom. (about 20-1/2 miles). "When the brilliant epoch of the power of the Chinghizkhanides," says Professor Axel Heikel, "was at an end, the city of Karakorum fell into oblivion, and towards the year 1590 was founded, in the centre of this ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... I'll get the big room fixed up for a study. He'll be tickled to pieces. There's beautiful furniture in the room now. I suppose he'll think it's beautiful. It's terrible old-fashioned. I'd rather have a nice new set of bird's-eye maple to my taste, and a brass bedstead, but I know he'll like this ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the poem aside from their historic value, because they are alive and full of action,—panoramas of the whole mechanical and industrial life of America, north, east, south, west,—bits of scenery, bird's-eye views, glimpses of moving figures, caught as by a flash, characteristic touches indoors and out, all passing in quick succession before you. They have in the fullest measure what Lessing demands in poetry,—the quality of ebbing and flowing action, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... sphere hovering in the air above the game sanctuary on the northern tip of Manhattan Island. In the screen, he had an aerial view of the grassy, rocky mounds where the earth hid the shattered and partially melted ruins of long-collapsed buildings. In the center of the screen was a bird's-eye view of a man holding a rifle. He was walking slowly, picking his way carefully along the bottom of the shallow gully that had once been ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... magnificent Milton has it. His tobacco must be bird's-eye, as he takes a bird's-eye view of things; and his pipe is presumably a meer-sham, whence his "sable clouds turn forth their silver lining on the night." Smoking, without doubt, is a bad practice, especially when the clay is choked or the ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... bank-bills in his pocket; but with the self-possession and rapid bird's-eye view of a man accustomed to catch at all resources, he still hoped to recover himself by some one of the endless caprices of play. Montefiore had already mentioned his intention of visiting Bordeaux. ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac

... and genial companions, lovers of natural and lovely things! Nor for these do I desire a seat at Florian's marble tables, or a perch in Quadri's window, though the former supply dainty food, and the latter command a bird's-eye view of the Piazza. Rather would I lead them to a certain humble tavern on the Zattere. It is a quaint, low-built, unpretending little place, near a bridge, with a garden hard by which sends a cataract of honeysuckles sunward over a too-jealous wall. In front ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... by no means deals in fiction; She gathers a repertory of facts, Of course with some reserve and slight restriction, But mostly traits of human things and acts. Love, war, a tempest—surely there's variety; Also a seasoning slight of lubrication; A bird's-eye view, too, of that wild society; A slight glance thrown on men ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... extremely difficult to obtain a comprehensive and accurate view of the blood in disease. It is for this reason that we welcome the present work in its English garb. Professor Ehrlich by his careful and extended observations on the blood has qualified himself to give a bird's-eye view of the subject, such as few if any are capable of offering; and his book now so well translated by Mr. Myers must remain one of the classical works on blood in disease and on blood diseases, and in introducing it to English readers Mr. Myers makes an important contribution to the accurate study ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... led him. His only thought was of the great adventure of letters in which he proposed to engage, and his first glance round his "bed-sitting-room" showed him that there was no piece of furniture suitable for his purpose. The table, like the rest of the suite, was of bird's-eye maple; but the maker seemed to have penetrated the druidic secret of the rocking-stone, the thing was in a state of unstable equilibrium perpetually. For some days he wandered through the streets, inspecting the second-hand furniture shops, and at last, in a forlorn byway, found ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... leary flash mot, and she was round and fat, [1] With twangs in her shoes, a wheelbarrow too, and an oilskin round her hat; A blue bird's-eye o'er dairies fine— as she mizzled through Temple Bar, [2] Of vich side of the way, I cannot say, but she boned it from ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... to drive back in, and he almost carried her up to their bedroom. It was on the same floor as the other room, with the same marvelous bird's-eye view of the starlit sky and the lamplit town. He had got her to himself at last—here, high above the world, half-way to heaven. There seemed to him something poetical, almost sublime in their situation: they two alone, isolated, millions of people surrounding them and no living ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... a blessed thing that none of us had a bird's-eye view of that same water. No man of force will listen when his mind is made up, and perhaps it is just as well. For in that way things are accomplished. Clark would not listen to Monsieur Vigo, and hence ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... from Appleton hisself he'll hate ye worse'n ever, f'r he'll think ye'll be afther crimpin' his bird's-eye game. Take advice, Bill, an' kape on th' good side av um av ye can. He'll t'row ut into ye wid all manner av dhirty thricks, but howld ye're timper, an' maybe ye'll winter ut ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... whole to be well stirred and boiled. Brush over while hot, and immediately rub off with soft shavings or a sponge. For the antique hues of old wainscot mix equal parts of burnt umber and brown ochre. For new oak, bird's-eye maple, birch, satin-wood, or any similar light yellowish woods, whiting or white-lead, tinted with orange chrome, or by yellow ochre and a little size. For walnut, brown umber, glue size, and water; or by burnt umber very moderately modified with yellow ochre. ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead

... for something in the root of the hedge, you wouldn't want to scour the road in a high-speed automobile. And still less would you want to get a bird's-eye view in an aeroplane. That parable about fits my case. I have been in the clouds and I've been scorching on the pikes, but what I was wanting was in the ditch all the time, and I naturally missed it ... I had the wrong stunt, Major. I was too high up and ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... will the gentle Dilettanti crew Now delegate the task to digging Gell? That mighty limner of a bird's-eye view, How like to Nature let his volumes tell; Who can with him the folio's limits swell With all the Author saw, or said he saw? Who can topographise or delve so well? No boaster he, nor impudent and raw, His pencil, pen, and ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... snow lay here and there in the hollows. Two or three miles below them nestled one of the most famous pleasure resorts of the entire region. Three or four times as distant lay the nearest town of any importance. Over the plain and through the clear atmosphere it looked like a bird's-eye-view map rather than an actual town. Far away to the left, gorgeous in coloring and grotesque in outline, could be seen the odd figures ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith

... it may, one thing is certain, that no solid plot of earth between its walls or hedges allows us such intricate and unexpected bird's-eye views of streets and squares, of the bustling or resting city; none gives us such a vault of heaven, pure and sunny, or creeping with clouds, or serenely starlit, as do these hanging gardens ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... women—come from all over the United States for the sole purpose of spending a few months or a season in this very place, enjoying the lectures, concerts, and art exhibitions which are so easily and freely accessible. But in this bird's-eye flight across the historical and geographical map of a city that tempts one to many pleasant delays, we must hover for a brief moment over the South and the ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... indeed, be able to hear the ever-memorable "Up, Guards, and at them!" but there can be no doubt that there are stars so far away that the rays of light which started from the earth on the day of the battle of Waterloo are only just arriving there. Further off still, there are stars from which a bird's-eye view could be taken at this very moment of the signing of Magna Charta. There are even stars from which England, if it could be seen at all, would now appear, not as the great England we know, but as a country covered by dense forests, and inhabited by painted savages, who ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... This bird's-eye view and lack of information about the details do less than justice to the crucial battle, which Maud'huy under Foch's general direction waged against the Germans round Arras and both they and the French regard as one of the decisive incidents in the war. Clearly, if Von Buelow succeeded ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... military and civil stations to the west. The people to be seen in the bazars of Peshawar are more interesting than any of its buildings. The Gor Khatri, part of which is now the tahsil, from which a bird's-eye view of the town can be obtained, was successively the site of a Buddhist monastery, a Hindu temple, a rest-house built by Jahangir's Queen, Nur Jahan, and the residence of Avitabile. The most noteworthy Muhammadan building is Muhabbat Khan's mosque. Avitabile used to hang people from its minarets. ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... maximum of eighty me'tres, and the thickness averaging two metres, seventy-five centimetres. It was possibly intended, like those above Wady Tiryam, to defend the western approach; and, superficially viewed, it looks like a line of stones heaped up over the dead, with that fine bird's-eye view of the valley which the Bedawi loves for his ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... is that landscape, Cousin Homer? Something foreign, evidently. I always think that a government office should be representative of the government. I have a print at home, a bird's-eye view of Washington in 1859, which I will send you if you like. I suppose you have an express frank? No? How mean of Congress! What did you say ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards

... are now on a splendid point of vantage for a bird's-eye view of the town we may as well take a glance ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... return, made choice of a dismal morning to bring his influence to bear upon her. He relied a good deal upon Valerie's affection for himself, which was strong and single-hearted. Moreover, he had trained her to the masculine habit of taking a broad view, a bird's-eye view, of the whole of a given subject, instead of turning the microscope of her emotions on any one point, after ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... us that at the end of the thirteenth century "the beautiful tower of Merton was still almost fresh, and the spires of St. Mary's, of old All Saints, of St. Frideswide, and the strong tower of New College on the city wall, were the most prominent features in a bird's-eye view of the town." To these must be added (as has been mentioned) the walls and watch towers, which must have lent a certain ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How

... From a bird's-eye view, these three burgs, the City, the Town, and the University, each presented to the eye an inextricable skein of eccentrically tangled streets. Nevertheless, at first sight, one recognized the fact that these three fragments formed but one body. One immediately ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... in his utterance, a divorce of manner between the speaker and his words, such as one would expect in a sibyl disclaiming under stress of the god. I fancied it had something to do with a black necktie that he wore instead of the blue bird's-eye cravat familiar to Tweedy's, and with his extraordinary conduct in refusing to-day the chop that the waiter brought, and limiting his lunch to cheese ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various

... Isaacs, "the good wife is the very best jewelry. Those are two dollars. But only study this pair. Hold those up to the light and take a bird's-eye view through those lovely stones, so round and large like green peas. Now look. So! Now ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin

... hanging on to his coat-tails all the way through. I made pills with him in the chemist's shop at Wimblehurst before he began. I was, you might say, the stick of his rocket; and after our tremendous soar, after he had played with millions, a golden rain in the sky, after my bird's-eye view of the modern world, I fell again, a little scarred and blistered perhaps, two and twenty years older, with my youth gone, my manhood eaten in upon, but greatly edified, into this Thames-side yard, into these white heats and hammerings, amidst the fine realites of steel—to think ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... de Lisle and Reed. After hearing their news I started off with the whole band to make a tour of the trenches held by the 88th Brigade, under General Cayley. On the way I was taken up to "Gibraltar" observation post to get a bird's-eye view of the line. Besides my old friends of the 29th Division I saw some of the new boys, especially the 1st Newfoundland Battalion under Colonel Burton, and the 2/1st Coy. of the London Regiment. This was the Newfoundlanders' first day in the trenches and they were very pleased with themselves. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... sympathy; the fact that it was an attempt to carry to its natural end, in brief compass, the story which, at Mr. Roosevelt's suggestion, I first tried to tell in England's Effort, published in 1916. England's Effort was a bird's-eye view of the first two years of the war, of the gathering of the new Armies, of the passing into law, and the results—up to the Battle of the Somme—of the Munitions Act of 1915. In this book, which I have again thrown into the form of letters—(it was, in fact, written week ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... a bird's-eye view of the main incidents of his boyhood, for we cannot quite agree with our author in thinking that his "old grammar laid the foundation, in part, of Abraham's future character," seeing we have previously been told that he had "become the most important man in the place," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... upon the parapet of the terrace, whence they had a bird's-eye view of the big square immediately below, and the picturesquely irregular buildings, above whose gabled red roofs grim watch-towers and quaint spires or cupolas rose here and there. Down in the square swarms ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... Mentally fortified by this bird's-eye view from the Citadel (of course, I had to trot them up again for the sunset), my charges let themselves be led from mosque to mosque, from tomb to tomb. Some, possessed with a demoniac desire to get their money's worth of Egypt, were unable to enjoy any sight, in their ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... is the only Roman map extant; it gives lines of roads from the eastern shores of Britain to the Adriatic Sea. It is really a kind of bird's-eye view taken from the African coast. The Mediterranean runs as a thin strip through the lower part of the map. The lower section ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... Holy Port in 1862, when Messieurs Blandy's steamship Falcon was not in existence. And now as the Luso steamed along shore, no external change appeared. A bird's-eye view of the islet suggests a podao or Madeiran billhook, about six miles by three. The tool's broken point is the Ilha da Cima, facing to north-east, a contorted pile which resembles a magnified cinder. The ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... merciful apathy was succeeded by the sudden acuteness of vision with which sick people sometimes wake out of a heavy sleep. As she opened her eyes they rested on the picture that hung above the bed. It was a large engraving with a dazzling white margin enclosed in a wide frame of bird's-eye maple with an inner scroll of gold. The engraving represented a young man in a boat on a lake over-hung with trees. He was leaning over to gather water-lilies for the girl in a light dress who lay among the cushions in the stern. The scene was full of a drowsy midsummer ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... staved off the edge of their hunger with a few biscuits, and, trudging on, covered the last mile in such quick time that Leonard declared it reminded him of a paper-chase. It was rather a steep pull to gain the highest point, yet they were well rewarded when they reached it by the bird's-eye view of the landscape around them, farms, churches, and distant village looking like so many toys, and the fields like ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... "Consider, in the bird's-eye view of the banquet, the trencher cuts, foh! nankeen displays: as intersticed with many a brilliant drop to friendly beck and clubbish hail, to moisten the viands or cool the incipient cayenne. No unfamished livery-man would desire better dishes, or high-tasted courtier better wines. With ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... got back to the paper on Machiavelli now, and ask the reader to examine this passage from it which I append. I do not mean examine it in a bird's-eye way; I mean search it, study it. And, of course, read it aloud. I may be wrong, still it is my conviction that one cannot get out of finely wrought literature all that is in it by ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... turned our faces eastward through the afternoon, unaware that we were about to take a last bird's-eye view of the great Naval and Military Base of Mudros, and a first peep at the Gallipoli Peninsula, where in less than a hundred hours we should be digging ourselves ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... blue eyes of the girl to the little blue bird's-eye growing on a bank of clover. She pauses while he stoops to ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... Belcher[62]; and to Jim Belcher, most gentlemanly of prize-fighters, we owe the belcher handkerchief, which had large white spots with a dark blue dot in the centre of each on a medium blue ground. It was also known to the "fancy" as a "bird's-eye wipe." ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... unnecessary to call Samuel Weller; for Samuel Weller stepped briskly into the box the instant his name was pronounced; and placing his hat on the floor, and his arms on the rail, took a bird's-eye view of the Bar, and a comprehensive survey of the Bench, with a remarkably cheerful and lively aspect. 'What's your name, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... Roald Amundsen Approximate Bird's-eye View, Drawn from the First Telegraphic Account Reproduced by permission of the Daily Chronicle The Opening of Roald Amundsen's Manuscript Helmer Hanssen, Ice Pilot, a Member of the Polar Party The "Fram's" Pigsty The Pig's Toilet Hoisting the Flag A Patient Some Members of the ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... monster, then the man; Tattooed or woaded, winter-clad in skins, Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate; As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here Among the lowest.' Thereupon she took A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past; Glanced at the legendary Amazon As emblematic of a nobler age; Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo; Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines Of empire, and the woman's state in each, How far from just; ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... spring are purple with the flowers of ground ivy, which flowers with exceptional freedom. One bank, or waste spot, that was observed was first of all perfectly purple with ground ivy; by degrees these flowers faded, and the spot became a beautiful blue with veronica, or bird's-eye; then, again, these disappeared, and up came the larger daisies on stalks a foot high, whose discs touched each other from end to end of the bank. Here was a succession of flowers as if designed, one taking the other's place. Meantime the trifolium appeared like ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... break of morning. Having refreshed myself with a breakfast of fruit, after the exhaustion of my nocturnal flight, I ascended a spacious palm tree, which afforded an admirable view of the adjacent country, and a desirable shelter from the ardours of the rising sun. My first impulse was to take a bird's-eye view of the novel scene which lay before me, and I gazed around for some minutes with intense delight; but fatigue gradually obtained the mastery over curiosity, and, putting my head unconsciously beneath my wing, I fell into a profound sleep. How long this continued, I know ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various

... glittered in the beginning of sunset, as if they were crusted with jewels of different colours. Its dominance over all that surrounded it, all that was smaller and less powerful and impressive than itself, was astonishingly evident from this bird's-eye point of view; but brightly as the jewels gleamed, they had lost their allurement for these two. With Vanno's arms around her, Mary wondered how she could ever have felt that the Casino was a vast magnet compelling her to come to it in spite of herself, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... on an up-ended barrel to investigate a promising lair above my head, and from this altitude was unexpectedly presented with a bird's-eye view of a hat with a silver band inside the railed and curtained "snug". I descended swiftly, not without an impression of black bottles on the snug table, and Katty Ann here slid in from the search ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... often interfuse itself with their grandest impulses; and their very deeds of self-sacrifice are sometimes only the rebound of a passionate egoism. So it was with Mr. Tryan: and any one looking at him with the bird's-eye glance of a critic might perhaps say that he made the mistake of identifying Christianity with a too narrow doctrinal system; that he saw God's work too exclusively in antagonism to the world, the flesh, and the devil; that his intellectual ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... shyness after a time, and at length produced the inevitable siri and penang. At the close of the interview we begged their acceptance of a piece of Bristol bird's-eye each, which they at once put in their mouths and commenced chewing, and we then parted with ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt

... point near to the close of the seventeenth century, when John Evelyn, in his age, is repairing the damages that Peter the Great has wrought in his pretty Deptford home, let us take a bird's-eye ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... If a bird's-eye view of the capital had enchanted Proserpine, the agreeable impression was not diminished, as is generally the case, by her entrance into the city. Never were so much splendour and neatness before combined. Passing through a magnificent arch, Proserpine entered a street of vast ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli

... of popular sentiment is toward the metal bed, with accompanying furniture in plain or bird's-eye maple, mahogany, dark oak, curly birch, or mahogany-birch. Dressers range in price from $9 to $50; princess dressers from $10.50 to $50; chiffoniers from $10 to $35; and dressing tables from $10 to $50. Furniture, like friends, cannot be acquired promiscuously without ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... complexities, indeed, are so tortuous and so multitudinous that they baffle description within the limits of the present book. Yet, since nothing can be understood without some reference to its antecedents, we must take at least a bird's-eye view of the growing entanglement which finally resulted in the ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood

... precaution to order, is probably waiting our appearance. It must be eaten, though under the penalty of being thought moon-struck rhymers by the whole State. Come, Ned; if you are sufficiently satisfied with looking at the Wigwam in a bird's-eye view, we will descend and put its beauties to the severer test of ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... "hired man," pursuing a suggestion made by the latter, went to the top of Quill's Window for a bird's-eye view of the river and the surrounding country. The sharp eyes of the Pinkerton man descried the rowboat under the willows along the opposite bank ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... had a bird's-eye view of the real country," said Sophy to her friend. "Those great calm seas of green rice, bounded by dark woods, with a white pagoda peeping through here and there; the fierce strong rivers flowing through overhanging forests, and the deep red sunsets, turning old ruins into flames, and then the ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... appearance, phenomenon, sight, spectacle, show, premonstration^, scene, species, view, coup d'oeil [Fr.]; lookout, outlook, prospect, vista, perspective, bird's-eye view, scenery, landscape, picture, tableau; display, exposure, mise en sc ne [Fr.]; rising of the curtain. phantasm, phantom &c (fallacy of vision) 443. pageant, spectacle; peep-show, raree-show, gallanty-show; ombres chinoises ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... peevishly. "Girls always want to marry dragoons; and tradespeople always want to serve dragoons; and hotel-keepers to entertain dragoons; and theatrical managers to be patronized by dragoons. Who could have ever expected that a dragoon would drink sixpenny ale, smoke horrid bird's-eye tobacco, and let his wife wear a ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... an element of the grotesque in a bird's-eye view of a lady making shots at her mouth with a spoon and trying to smile and ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells



Words linked to "Bird's-eye" :   panoramic, broad, bird's-eye maple, bird's-eye bush



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